A NEW HISTORY OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY

A NEW HISTORY OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY

CHARLES FREEMAN
Copyright 2009 Charles Freeman

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Freeman, Charles, 1947
A new history of early Christianity / Charles Freeman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-12581-8 (ci : alk. paper)
1. Church history Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600. I. Title.
BR162.3.F73 2009
270.1dc22
2009012009
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Lydia
 Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Preface

PART ONE: BEGINNINGS

CHAPTER ONE A Trial

CHAPTER TWO The Seedbed: Judaism in the First Century AD
CHAPTER THREE Jesus before the Gospels
CHAPTER FOUR Breaking Away: the First Christianities
CHAPTER FIVE What Did Paul Achieve?
CHAPTER SIX The Letter to the Hebrews
CHAPTER SEVEN Fifty Years On: the Gospel Writers Reflect on Jesus
CHAPTER EIGHT John and the Jerusalem Christians
CHAPTER NINE Creating a New Testament
CHAPTER TEN No Second Coming: the Search for Stability

PART TWO: BECOMING CHRISTIAN

CHAPTER ELEVEN Toeholds in a Wider Empire

CHAPTER TWELVE Open Borders: the Overlapping Worlds of Christians and Jews
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Was There a Gnostic Challenge?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Idea of a Church
CHAPTER FIFTEEN To Compromise or Reject: Confronting the Material World
INTERLUDE ONE The Earliest Christian Art
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Celsus Confronts the Christians
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The Challenge of Greek Philosophy
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Origen and Early Christian Scholarship
CHAPTER NINETEEN New Beginnings: the Emergence of a Latin Christianity
CHAPTER TWENTY Victims or Volunteers: Christian Martyrs
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE The Spread of Christian Communities

PART THREE: THE IMPERIAL CHURCH

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO The Motives of Constantine
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Debating the Nature of God
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR The Stifling of Christian Diversity
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE The Assault on Paganism
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX No one is honoured before him: the Rise of the Bishop
INTERLUDE TWO The Art of Imperial Christianity
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN An Obsession with the Flesh
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT The End of Optimism: Augustine and the Consequences of Sin
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Divine but Human
CHAPTER THIRTY The Closing of the Schools
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE A Fragile Church: Christianity and the Collapse of the Western Empire
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Faith, Certainty and the Unknown God

Notes
Glossary
Further Reading
Timeline
Index
 Illustrations
1 Selection of papyrus fragments from the Gospel of Matthew, Oxyrhynchus Papyri (P. Oxy LXIV
44016). Courtesy of Imaging Papyri Project, University of Oxford and Egypt Exploration Society.
2 Luke 16:921, early third-century papyrus (P75).
3 Codices of the Nag Hammadi library. Photo by Jean Doresse/ Institute for Antiquity and
Christianity, Claremont, California.
4 Funerary stele of Licinia Amias, late third-century. Museo Nazionale Romano Terme di
Diocleziano, Rome. Photo courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni Culturali Soprintendenza Speciale per
i Beni Archeologici di Roma.
5 Fresco of Eucharistic scene from the catacomb of Saint Callistus, late second-century. From Joseph
Wilpert, Die Malereien der Katakomben Roms Freiburg im Breisgau, 1903. Heidelberg University
Library.
6 Christ as a sun god, Vatican, St Peters Basilica (Necropolis). 1990. Photo Scala, Florence.
7 The Good Shepherd, Asia Minor, c. 27080. The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance
Fund 1965.241.
8 The Good Shepherd, panel in the mosaic floor at the Basilica of Aquileia. Photo by Mario Zanette.
9 The Good Shepherd, mosaic lunette from above the entrance of the fifth-century Mausoleum of
Galla Placidia. Mausoleo di Galla Placidia, Ravenna, Italy/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.
10 Saints Peter and Paul saying goodbye (two men kissing), ivory buckle, third- or fourth-century.
The Art Archive/Antiquarium Castellamare di Stabia Italy/Gianni Dagli Orti.
11 Vault mosaic with the traditio legis, Santa Costanza, Rome, c. 350. Courtesy of Saskia Ltd., Dr
Ron Wiedenhoeft.
12 Jonah being swallowed by a sea monster, panel in the mosaic floor at the Basilica of Aquileia.
Photo by Mario Zanette.
13 Jonah Cast Up, Asia Minor, c. 270280. The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund
1965.238.
14 Detail of the Crucifixion, from the door depicting scenes from the Old and New Testaments, fifth-
century. Santa Sabina, Rome, Italy/Alinari/The Bridgeman Art Library.
15 Ivory pyxis, early fifth-century. bpk/Skulpturensammlung und Museum fr Byzantinische Kunst,
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Photo: Jrgen Liepe.
16 Christ enthroned among the apostles, mosaic apse of San Pudenziana, Rome, c. 400. Copyright
Johannes G. Deckers, photo Franz Schlechter/Heidelberg.
17 Christus militans, mosaic in Archiepiscopal Chapel, Ravenna, late fifth-century. akg-
images/Erich Lessing.
18 Sarcophagus showing scenes from the Bible, Santa Maria Antique, Rome, late third-century.
Hirmer Verlag, Mnchen.
19 Sarcophagus showing scenes from the Passion, mid-third-century. Allan T. Kohl/Art Images for
College Teaching (AICT)
20 Three Women at the Tomb and the Resurrection of Christ, ivory panel, early fifth-century.
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum Mnchen.
21 Detail of the ascension of Elijah, from the door depicting scenes from the Old and New
Testaments, Santa Sabina, Rome, fifth-century. Photo by Graydon Snyder.
22 Interior view of basilica of Santa Sabina, Rome. akg-images/Bildarchiv Monheim.
23 Detail of Virgin and Child, mosaic in Sant Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, sixth-century. akg-
images/Erich Lessing.
24 Ivory gospel book covers from the Dittico delle Cinque Parti, late fifth-century. Copyright
Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano.
25 Ivory throne of Saint Maximinian, sixth-century. The Art Archive/Archbishops Palace Ravenna
Italy/Alfredo Dagli Orti.
26 Cross of Justin II. Vatican, St Peters Basilica (Treasury Museum). 1990. Photo Scala,
Florence.
 Maps
1 Jewish and Samaritan populations
2 Pauls missionary journeys
3 Boundaries of the Roman empire
4 Rome and the main centres of Christianity
 Preface
IN AD 30, A JEWISH PREACHER FROM GALILEE CALLED JESUS ARRIVED in Jerusalem for the Passover. A
crowd of his followers had come with him and the bustle and excitement soon spread to the Jerusalem
crowds. Jesus had talked of a coming kingdom, a spiritual and political revolution that would renew
Israel. The authorities, the Jewish priesthood and their Roman over-lords, felt threatened by the
disturbance. They arrested and crucified Jesus, the best way of publicly terrorising his followers. It
appeared they had snuffed out the movement.
Somehow, in the bleak hours and days that followed, a core of Jesus followers began to conceive
of him as something more than an ordinary mortal. There was talk that his tomb had been found empty
and that favoured disciples had seen him risen from the dead. Then, after forty days at most, the
appearances ceased, although some believed he would come again.
As the months and years passed and there was no second coming, his disciples began to speculate
on whom Jesus might have been. They had a mass of Jewish titles to draw on Son of God,
Messiah, Son of Man, Lord, Prophet. For a Jew none of these implied divinity. Son of God
meant only one specially favoured by God; messiahship was associated with the (inevitably violent)
liberation of Israel from foreign domination by one of the royal house of David. From the earliest
days Christians debated and argued among themselves as to how one could find a coherent
understanding of Jesus. In his anguished First Letter to the Corinthians, one of the oldest Christian
texts to survive, the apostle Paul complained that his readers had divided into followers of himself, of
the apostle Peter, of an intellectual, Apollos, and of Jesus now seen as Christos, the anointed one (1
Corinthians 1:1214).
This picture of Christians in debate may seem startling to some readers. All too often Christian
doctrine is presented as fixed and unchallengeable, but even the slightest contact with the history of
Christianity shows that this was never so. This book takes it for granted that there were competing
traditions within the emerging church and explores the difficulty in ever finding any one true
Christianity. In fact, it was only when the Roman emperors of the fourth century used the enormous
coercive power and patronage at their command to insist on a uniform set of beliefs that one could
talk in such terms.
So while, traditionally, the history of the church has been written as if the doctrines chosen by the
emperors, in particular the Nicene formulation of the Trinity, were the only ones possible, I have not
made this assumption here. I prefer, for instance, to highlight the impossibility of achieving any form
of consensus on the nature of the risen Christ and his relationship to God. I hope this makes for an
altogether more absorbing narrative and one that corresponds to the debates as they are recorded.
At the same time, assertions by biblical scholars that there are no other historical explanations of
particular events than supernatural ones need to be challenged. The sources which describe the
physical resurrection of Jesus are, for instance, so late, fragmentary and contradictory that the
question of whether it happened must be left open. Surely, no one would seriously argue that the
early Christians did not believe that Christ had been raised, writes Alan Segal, author of an excellent
study of the Afterlife. But just as surely few if any modern historians would argue that any evidence
could move us from this historical fact to the supposition that Jesus was actually and physically
raised from the dead and that he appeared in his transformed fleshly body.1
 This raises a vital point. Historians and theologians are both committed to finding truth, yet both
work with totally inadequate evidence. For the historian the past recedes quickly and most events are
never recorded. Most historical solutions exist as hypotheses, vulnerable to the discovery of new
evidence or to be left for ever unproved. The theologian has the challenge of establishing knowledge
of a different sort: what might exist for humans after death, whether a creator designed the world and
whether Jesus Christ had a human or divine nature, or some form of combination of them. On the
whole, theologians appear to find it easier to come to certain conclusions than historians do. It is rare,
for instance, to find a work of theology that proposes a range of hypotheses about the supernatural and
leaves it open for the reader to decide.
This was certainly not the case in the early church. One of the fascinations of writing about these
centuries is to see how highly educated minds grappled with the problems of understanding the
supernatural. The range of debate is far greater than anything one finds in discussions on religion
today. Was Jesus God the same as the Creator God of the Old Testament? Can Paul be read so as to
deny the physical resurrection of the body? Did the act of creation involve bringing order to what
already existed or was it a totally new beginning? Can one ever come up with a satisfactory definition
of the relationship with the Son and the Father and the human and divine (if any) aspects of Jesus?
This was the grist of early Christian theology.
So a historian of early Christianity must tackle diversity, and I think it helps if one does not feel
that there is a correct answer to be found. Intellectual, not to say spiritual, life lost a great deal when
theological debate was suppressed in the fourth and fifth centuries. I have tried to preserve the
breadth of early Christian thought without making judgement on it.
The world was transformed by the coming of Christianity. The belief that the Son of God had come
to earth, had redeemed the human race from its apparent sinfulness, and would be represented by the
continuing presence of the Holy Spirit was revolutionary. It was also, of course, very threatening. The
rejection of the ancient gods and the cultures that had sustained them was a powerful challenge to the
ethos of Greco-Roman society. In response to opposition, Christians had to define for themselves
what their faith meant for them while they were living on earth and how their beliefs could be given
continuity and coherence.
The triumph of Christianity in the fourth century, when Constantine offered both toleration and
patronage, was seen by its historian Eusebius as the inevitable and expected outcome of Gods plan.
Christianity had now become politically, socially and, not least, economically the dominant culture of
the empire and its successors. Resources were poured into buildings, bishops became powerful
figures in their own right. The state took responsibility for defining orthodoxy. The afterlife, and
whether one would find bliss or misery in it, began to pervade the Christian imagination in a way that
pagans found incomprehensible. No one can begin to understand the history of the western world
without grasping this transformation in consciousness.

There has long been a need for a new history of Christianity. In a review of yet another set of essays
in a handbook to early Christian studies, one biblical scholar recently bemoaned the fact that there
had been no such introduction since Henry Chadwicks excellent The Early Church, first published in
the 1960s. Yet I would never have taken on this book if I had not been challenged to do so by Heather
McCallum, my editor at Yale. It was her vision of the book as a critical but respectful history, and her
continued support during the two years of writing it, that have been fundamental to its completion.
 It will be clear from the text and the Further Reading that there are several scholars whose work I
have found indispensable. I suppose what unites them is that they accept the difficulty, even the
impossibility, of establishing the truth about the early church without denying the importance of
understanding this vital moment in religious history. While I could usually come to a synthesis of
scholarly views which seemed to fit with the evidence, it was vitally important to have my text read
by Yales anonymous readers. I am most grateful for their insights and encouraging comments. The
final work is, of course, my own.
I am always embarrassed by my returned copy-edited texts and I realise how many errors of
punctuation and grammar were left unnoticed until spotted by a sharp-eyed copy editor. Elizabeth
Bourgoin edited in-house, ably assisted by Charlotte Chapman as copy editor and Lucy Isenberg as
proofreader. Rachael Lonsdale carried out the picture research and Chartwell Illustrators the maps. I
am most grateful to them all for transforming my text into the high quality result that is the hallmark of
Yale University Press.
Many of my Christian friends are probably not aware of how much I have listened to their ideas
and valued their insights. I often felt that there are as many different Christianities as individuals I
talked to. Although the parameters of debate may be narrower than they were eighteen hundred years
ago, they remain broad and I am grateful for the opportunities I have had to reach a deeper
understanding of the ways in which different cultures, traditions and personal experiences relate to
the continuing history of Christianity.
Above all, I have rejoiced in the support of Lydia who has made a life with me forty years after
we first met. As this book was evolving so was our home, a sixteenth-century farmhouse, a converted
studio barn and twelve stables, in the depths of rural Suffolk. Restive horses kick on the back of my
bookshelves as I write. Lydia would certainly not agree with everything written here but I would
never have reached the end without the love and stability she has given me. I am truly grateful.
Map 1 Jewish and Samaritan populations.
Map 2 Pauls missionary journeys.

Map 3 Boundaries of the Roman empire.

Map 4 Rome and the main centres of Christianity.
P ART ONE : B EGINNINGS
 CHAPTER ONE
A Trial
THE PRAEFECTUS, THE ROMAN GOVERNOR OF THE PROVINCE OF Judaea, can never have looked forward
to travelling up to Jerusalem from his headquarters at Caesarea on the coast. It was his task to
supervise the keeping of good order at the feast of the Passover each year. Some hundreds of
thousands of Jews from throughout the Mediterranean would have gathered for the feast and there was
always the chance of disorder. Pontius Pilate, appointed the governor of the province in AD 26,
certainly had no reason to expect a warm welcome. On his very first visit to Jerusalem he had entered
the city with standards flaunting the image of the emperor Tiberius. This was taken as a provocative
display of graven images and ensured his period of office started in tension. Things got no better.
Pilate drew on Temple treasure for funds with which to build an aqueduct and then caused further
offence by placing standards with the emperors name on them in his palace. The Jewish philosopher
Philo wrote in a letter of complaint to Tiberius of Pilates briberies, insults, robberies, outrages,
wanton injuries and executions without trial. He was finally to be dismissed by the emperor in AD 36
after he had attacked a group of Samaritans whose gathering he considered seditious.1
Whatever Pilates personal inadequacies, the governorship of Judaea was never a prestigious
posting within the hierarchy of the Roman Empire. The neighbouring provinces of Egypt and Syria
were much wealthier (Egypt) or more strategically vulnerable (Syria). The latter was always granted
to officials of senatorial rank with a history of successful military command. The province, which
bordered on the expansionist empire of the Parthians, had recently been allocated a fourth legion,
making a total of well over twenty thousand highly trained and seasoned men always in place. The
praefectus literally one who is placed in charge of Judaea came from the equestrian class, the
class below the senatorial, and was not granted even one legion. The governors own complement of
some four thousand men were auxiliary troops drawn from the local population. Faced with serious
unrest, a praefectus would have to plead with the governor of neighbouring Syria for help.
Judaea had first come under Roman control in 63 BC. A brilliant and energetic Roman general,
Pompey, had swept across the eastern Mediterranean, clearing up the pirates who were threatening
Roman trade, next overrunning Syria and arriving in Jerusalem, then the capital of the independent
Hasmonaean kingdom. Here he outraged the Jews by entering the Holy of Holies in the Temple, still
in his battledress. The age of Jewish independence was over. In 40 BC Pompeys conquest was
threatened by a Parthian invasion that also reached Jerusalem before it was repulsed. A strong man
was needed to represent and protect Romes interests in the region and the Romans chose Herod, an
Idumaean, from south of Judaea, whose abilities had been spotted in the aftermath of the Parthian
invasion. As an outsider to the traditional priestly families of Jerusalem, Herod would always be
resented by the Jews. He was insensitive to the traditions of Jewish community life, a bully,
vindictive even to his own family, but the Romans trusted him. The emperor Augustus confirmed his
status as client king in 31 BC and his territories were extended. Despite all his cruelties and intrigues,
Herod opened up his kingdom to the bustling commercial and cultural world of the eastern
Mediterranean.
It was only on Herods death in 4 BC that resentments over his cruelty exploded. Brigands roamed
the countryside and order began to break down. The Romans were forced to intervene and ruthlessly
suppressed the unrest before splitting the kingdom among Herods three sons, none of whom was
given the full status of king that their father had enjoyed. This proved a much less effective
arrangement and when complaints reached Augustus about the brutality of one son, Archelaus, the
ruler of central Judaea, the emperor decided to impose direct Roman rule on Judaea, which was now
declared a province of the empire. Quirinius, the governor of Syria, was sent south in AD 6 to carry
out a census for tax purposes (previously taxation had gone direct to Herod) and the first praefectus
was appointed. It was a messy business. One Judas of Gamala led resistance to the Roman intrusion
and his followers were crucified along the roads of the new province.
Herods legacy still pervaded Judaea. When a governor arrived at his posting he disembarked at
the grand harbour that Herod had built at Caesarea and made his headquarters in Herods palace
there. When he made his way up from the coast to Jerusalem, some seventy miles inland, he would
have seen the vast Temple built by Herod, for, as Herod himself admitted, the glorification of his own
memory, towering over the city. The governor would be stationed in a building, the praetorium,
which had originally been Herods palace, some ten minutes walk from the Temple complex. His
troops would have been garrisoned alongside the precinct of the Temple in another Herodian
building, the Antonia, so-called because it had been the Roman general Mark Antony who had given
Herod his first promotion. However, despite the grandeur of his surroundings, the governor must have
felt very isolated. There is no record that Pilate had the group of friends and officials the senatorial
governors kept around them and there were virtually no local Romans to keep him company.
Pilates job was to represent the imperial power of the emperor Tiberius, to keep good order and
to ensure that taxation reached Rome. It was not to Romanise the population. The essence of Roman
rule lay in delegation and, if a province remained calm, was seldom obtrusive. Among the governor
of Judaeas responsibilities was the appointment of the high priest from among the Jewish elders. The
high priest would run the affairs of the province on a daily basis and this was why the job was
difficult. His traditional role of upholding the rituals and customs of his people did not fit easily with
his new role of meeting the needs of his imperial overlords. In practice high priests came and went as
they fell out with the governors. Pilates predecessor, Valerius Gratus, had soon got rid of the high
priest Annas on his arrival in AD 15 and then seems to have worked through another three before he
appointed Annas son-in-law, Caiaphas, in AD 18. Against all precedent, this proved to be an
extraordinarily successful appointment; Caiaphas saw out Gratus and then lasted the whole of Pilates
term of office, eighteen years in total.
Caiaphas would never have retained Jewish support, especially that of his fellow priests and
elders, if he had been obsequious to the Romans. Perhaps the relationship lasted largely because there
was so little contact between the governor and the high priest. The skilful management of the few days
that the governor was in Jerusalem was crucial. With his known insensitivity towards the Jews, there
must have been some apprehension every time Pilate arrived in case he caused new outrages. He
would have to be appeased, handled on a daily basis, convinced that Caiaphas was keeping good
order and encouraged to return to Caesarea as soon as the crowds had dispersed. For his part Pilate
must have been happy to leave Jerusalem for the luxury and calm of his coastal palace.
The high priest presided over the Sanhedrin, the council of elders. It was a powerful body with the
right to make laws, judge them in its role as criminal court and oversee the administration of Judaea.
It was the sole interpreter of Mosaic law. Traditionally the Sanhedrin, or its leading members, had
been able to pronounce a death penalty, stoning for blasphemy, idolatry or murder. Under Roman rule,
however, executions had become the prerogative of the governor. The Romans had their own method
of execution crucifixion, the humiliating exposure of a criminal who had been nailed to a cross and
left to die in agony. Crucifixions were common when the Romans were dealing with disorder; some
two thousand alone were carried out in Judaea in the unrest after the death of Herod.
The Passover of the year AD 30 was probably little different from any other but Pilate appears to
have been confused by a prisoner that the Sanhedrin, or at least a group of elders led by the high
priest, insisted he deal with. This was a Galilean by the name of Jesus. Galilee was not part of
Pilates jurisdiction when Archelaus had been deposed in AD 6, it had remained under his brother
Herod Antipas who still ruled there but, by crossing into Judaea and reaching Jerusalem, Jesus was
entering territory directly ruled by Rome, through the medium, of course, of the high priest and the
Sanhedrin. He had arrived with a band of fellow Galileans, some of them women, and seemed to
have received the acclamations of the local crowds when he entered the city. There were stories that
he had been teaching in the Temple and had caused a disturbance there, apparently driving out the
dealers in animals for sacrifice and overthrowing the tables of the moneychangers.
Johns gospel is probably right in placing the trial and crucifixion of Jesus the day before the
Passover when the priests would have been free to initiate charges.2 As soon as the feast began they
would have been preoccupied with their duties in the Temple and barred from criminal jurisdiction.
In Johns account Jesus is arrested in the garden by the Temple police, with Pilates auxiliary troops
in support, and brought in the first instance before Annas, Caiaphas father-in-law, who seems to have
assumed the role of elder statesman after his dismissal as high priest. Jesus is passed on by Annas to
Caiaphas himself who in turn sends him on to Pilate. By this time a crowd of Jews has gathered (or
been gathered) outside the praetorium. The charge is that Jesus claimed to be king of the Jews.
Pilate is not convinced and offers to release Jesus according to a custom (which is not recorded
anywhere outside the gospels) that a prisoner could be freed at the Passover. The crowd shout instead
for the release of Barabbas, a ringleader of unrest in the city, and cry out for Jesus crucifixion. There
is even an attempt to manipulate the situation when the crowd threatens to report Pilate to the emperor
if he does not comply (a clear sign of how limited in practice Roman power could be). Pilate
capitulates and orders the crucifixion. The sentence is carried out before Passover formally begins at
sunset. Two other condemned men, probably bandits, are executed at the same time.
Why were the Jews so insistent on calling for crucifixion, a punishment only the governor could
order? There is a plausible explanation rooted in the political scheming of Caiaphas. Caiaphas had
been shaken by the arrival in Jerusalem of Jesus and his followers, some of whom acclaimed him as a
messiah. The accolade messiah had many connotations, not least an association with the royal
lineage of David and the shattering of the godless nations through war. A new messiah would offer a
challenge to the status of the priest-hood and to the traditional structure of society, possibly through
the use of violence.3 Jesus needed to be dealt with in some public way to show that any claimed
messiahship was a sham. The Jews themselves had no right to order an execution. If the Romans
crucified him this would serve Caiaphas purpose: Jesus would have been shown, in the most public
and humiliating way possible, not to have been able to establish his own kingdom or threaten priestly
authority.
The priests needed to act fast. If Jesus was not dealt with now, Pilate would have returned to
Caesarea and the possibility of executing Jesus would have been lost until his next visit. To ensure a
crucifixion, the interest of Pilate in the case had to be aroused. So a political charge, that Jesus
claimed to be king of the Jews, and was thus seditious, was concocted. When Pilate still hesitated,
every method was used to manipulate the isolated governor into acquiescence and Caiaphas and his
supporters eventually succeeded.4 Jesus was crucified.
 The story, of course, does not end there. While Caiaphas might still have had a role to play in
defusing any unrest that followed the crucifixion, the memories of Jesus among his followers, the
reports that soon circulated that he had risen after three days in his tomb, the belief that he was truly a
messiah soon to return to earth in glory, allowed a movement to coalesce in his memory. It grew from
within Judaism.
 CHAPTER TWO
The Seedbed
JUDAISM IN THE FIRST CENTURY AD

JESUS WAS A JEW. FOR MUCH OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY THIS HAS BEEN denied or avoided. The apostle
Paul began the tradition through his own ambivalence about the relationship between Jesus and
traditional Judaism. In Johns gospel, written some sixty years after the crucifixion by a man steeped
in Greek culture, Jesus is portrayed as already distancing himself from his Jewish heritage, above all
in Chapter Eight of the gospel where a confrontation leaves a group of Jews ready to stone him. Some
sixty years further on (c.155), Melito, the bishop of Sardis, presented what had become a
conventional narrative: O lawless Israel, what is this unprecedented crime you committed, thrusting
your Lord among unprecedented sufferings For him whom the Gentiles worshipped and
uncircumcised men admired and foreigners glorified, over whom even Pilate washed his hands, you
killed him at the great feast [i.e. the Passover]. Here Melito creates a Gentile following for Jesus for
which there is no historical record, and emphasises the primacy of the Jews role in the crucifixion. In
his celebrated Life of Jesus, Ernest Renan (18231892) went further still. Renan stated that
fundamentally there was nothing Jewish about Jesus, and went on, in fact, to describe Jesus as a
destroyer of Judaism.1
There has never been a consensus over the nature of Jesus. Even today, with much more evidence
of the social, economic and religious background available, his biographers have described him
variously as a violent revolutionary ready to take up the sword against Roman oppression, an
apocalyptic prophet ushering in Gods reign on earth, a proto-Marxist social reformer urging an
economic and social revolution, a Hasid, or Jewish holy man, of whom there were many other
examples, an early feminist who elevated women to a higher status than traditional Jewish society
allowed, and even a Cynic philosopher who preached the renunciation of all worldly goods.
However, despite those who argue that Jesus was a representative of Greek culture and philosophy,
there is now general agreement that his Jewishness was central to his identity. At the same time there
has been a growing awareness of the vibrant complexity of Judaism in the first century AD.2
Like every Jew, Jesus would have been at home with an inheritance that stretched back centuries to
the patriarch Abraham, and which gave crucial roles to Moses, leader of the Exodus from Egypt to the
promised land, and the supreme law giver, King David, the creator of the Jewish nation state and
the sweet psalmist of Israel. It had not been an easy history. According to the scriptures, the first
kingdom of Israel had been founded by Saul, the father of David, and established its capital at
Jerusalem where Davids son Solomon constructed the first Temple. All twelve tribes of Israel, each
a descendant of one of the twelve children of Jacob, participated in the new state but when, in the
tenth century, Israel split into two kingdoms, Judah, which retained its capital at Jerusalem, and Israel
to the north, they were divided between the two. Israel became the home of ten of the tribes, Judah of
the remaining two. A thousand years after the tribes had been divided, memories of their unity in one
state endured. It is probable that the choosing of twelve disciples by Jesus echoes an ancient Jewish
yearning for restoration.
The two states existed side by side until the destruction of Israel by the Assyrians in 722 BC. The
kingdom of Judah survived but was later destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BC. This was a
traumatic moment for the Jews. Solomons Temple was sacked and Jewish leaders expelled. Many
went into exile in Babylon. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we
remembered Zion How shall we sing the Lords song in a strange land? as the haunting Psalm 137
puts it. Yet the upheaval led to a period of great intellectual creativity. The Torah, or Law, was
consolidated in the scriptures. It was a people renewed in confidence who set about rebuilding the
Temple in Jerusalem when the conquest of Babylon by the Persian King of Kings, Cyrus, allowed
them to return to Judaea in the 530s. The prophet Isaiah tells of the return from exile and how the
suffering of the servant of the Lord led to the victory of the Jews.
Now began the Second Temple period which was to last six hundred years until the second and
complete destruction of the Temple by the Romans in AD 70. The Persians were succeeded by the
Greeks after Alexander the Great destroyed the Persian empire in the 330s BC. Alexanders
successors, the Seleucid dynasty, tried to impose Greek culture on the Jews but a successful revolt by
the Maccabees resulted in the independence of Judaea in 141, an independence which was preserved
until the coming of the Romans under Pompey in 63 BC. Etched into Jewish history was the experience
of occupation, whether by Greeks with their cultural imperialism or by Romans with their
insensitivity to Jewish custom. A sense of defilement by the outsider was pervasive, intensified with
each new Roman intrusion. The Maccabees were remembered as martyrs and later provided an
inspiration for Christians facing, in their turn, the might of the Roman Empire.
The Jews enjoyed a unique covenant with their God that had been revealed at crucial moments of
Jewish history. The relationship was always fraught if the nation or an individual offended God, his
support would be lost and only through repentance would it be regained. Memories of exile or
occupation reinforced the fear that the covenant might be permanently broken. Yet so long as there
was repentance, God would always renew his trust and bring hope to his people. The chosen people
would, in the final order of things, be saved. The idea of a covenant with God was one of the many
features of Judaism that was to be absorbed and refashioned by followers of Jesus Christ.
This benevolence of God required a response of gratitude and obedience. Judaism emphasised the
importance of the continuous worship of God. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength (Deuteronomy 5:67). This
worship was focused on the Temple in Jerusalem, which was the most important symbol of the nation,
and Gods relationship with it. After Herods rebuilding of the Temple, a project that went on well
into the first century AD, it was a huge and magnificent building, giving Jerusalem the status of one of
the great cities of the eastern Mediterranean.
An observant Jew would attend the Temple three times a year: at the Passover, which was linked
to the Feast of the Unleavened Bread that immediately followed it, Pentecost, and the feast of the
Tabernacles. In coming up to Jerusalem for the Passover, Jesus was confirming his status as an
observant Jew. The Passover commemorated the moment when the Jews, in captivity in Egypt, were
ordered to kill a lamb and sprinkle its blood on the doorpost, so that their firstborn would be spared
from Gods slaughter of the firstborn of the Egyptians. The practice of sacrifice, the offering of an
animal cattle, sheep, goats or doves to God through the priests was universal and all Jews would
also pay a Temple tax to be spent on sacrifices on behalf of the community. In between visits to the
Temple, Jews would attend their local synagogues for prayer as well as conducting devotions in their
own homes. In the synagogues there would be readings of the scriptures so that they would be well-
known texts even to the illiterate. The preservation of teachings, prophecies and the Law in writing so
that it could be relayed on to each generation was crucial for the cohesion of the community.
 In so far as there was a Jewish aristocracy, it was of the ancient priestly families a connection
with the priesthood is a hallmark of an illustrious line as the historian Josephus put it, stressing his
own aristocratic ancestry. Powerful among them were the Sadducees, a distinct grouping of priests
who paid particular respect to the Temple ritual and who developed their own beliefs, which
included a rejection of any belief in the resurrection of the body, apparently on the grounds that it was
not to be found in the scriptures. Marks gospel shows Jesus challenging them on this (12:26). Herod
had suppressed the Sadducees but they were supportive of Roman rule and the gospels see them as a
privileged elite that was, understandably, antagonistic to Jesus. They probably made up the majority
of the members of the Sanhedrin.
The post of high priest had a far higher status than the gospels suggest. Caiaphas was the most
powerful person in Judaea, the combination of his status with his own popular support making it
almost impossible for a governor to defy him. When the Jews did revolt, in AD 66, it took a massive
Roman counteroffensive to bring the uprising to a bloody end. So long as the high priest kept order in
his own community and worked at his relationship with the governor he was in a formidable position
and Caiaphas survival for so much longer than any single governors period of office makes the
point. However, there is evidence from archaeological excavations in Jerusalem that the priests were
living increasingly luxurious lives and so, in a trend which was probably condoned by Herod, placing
themselves apart from the mass of their fellow Jews. This was bound to cause social tension that was
probably reflected in unrest in the crowds when they gathered in Jerusalem for the major feasts. This
explains the uneasy relationship between high priest and governor at each Passover. The high priest
needed the help of the governors auxiliaries but could hardly afford to be seen as the tool of Roman
imperialism.
The Greeks and Romans could never understand the ritual of circumcision, the ancient and
obligatory requirement for all male Jewish children. Circumcision was the entry rite to membership
of the people of God, one reason why its rejection by the apostle Paul as a requirement for Christians
caused such outrage. The Sabbath was sacred and no work could take place on it, even the sharing of
meals if this involved the work of taking food to anothers house. There is a story relating to a siege
of Jerusalem in the second century BC. The Greek historian Plutarch, writing much later, told how,
because it was the Sabbath day, the Jews sat in their unwashed clothes, while the enemy was
planting ladders against the walls and capturing the walls, and they did not get up but remained there,
bound there in their superstition as in one great net. There was continuous debate over exactly what
one could and could not do on a Sabbath and it was this lack of resolution that was exploited by
Jesus opponents when they wished to discredit him.
These requirements were enshrined in the Law. The original Hebrew term, Torah, meaning
teaching or instruction, was contained in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Tanakh, the
Hebrew scriptures (later, for Christians, the Old Testament). It was only when the scriptures were
translated into Greek, that Torah was rendered, somewhat misleadingly, as nomos, and it was this
term which was translated as Law. The teachings of the Torah extended far beyond a list of
prohibitions. They underpinned an ethical approach which recognised Gods love, not only for his
nation, but also for humanity as a whole and even for working animals, which were included within
the requirement to rest on the Sabbath. The land too was allowed a Sabbath so that it could lie
fallow every seventh year. Piety was always central to Judaism it was a religion as much of
practice as of theological debate. There was a strong emphasis on a commitment to the poor in one
ruling it was said that in a city where there were both Jewish and Gentile poor, the poor Gentiles
should also be helped for the sake of peace. Of course, over and above this the Law had a sacred
quality that was deeply embedded in the Jewish consciousness. It was little wonder that Paul
encountered so much opposition from his fellow Jews when he claimed that Jesus had superseded the
Law.
The priests were important in interpreting the Torah, especially as they were responsible for the
supervision of the correct rituals in the Temple. There were two other groups who were associated
with open discussion of the Law. The first is the scribes who could read and write extracts from the
scriptures for themselves. Their reading equipped them with a reservoir of recondite knowledge that
was of immense use to those seeking clarification or guidance. In the gospels the scribes are spoken
of as if they were ready to pronounce on all kinds of matters. The second group is the Pharisees. The
Pharisees appear to have originated as a distinct party in the reaction to the imposition of Greek ways
of thinking by the Greek king Antiochus after Judaea had been absorbed into his Seleucid empire in
the 190s BC. They stood for the traditional law and supported the Maccabean revolt that led to the
independent Hasmonaean kingdom. However, they believed in balancing a study of the written law
with oral interpretations of it and so, in practice, they were more flexible than the intrusive and
argumentative figures who appear in the gospels might suggest. There also seem to have been far
fewer Pharisees than one would think 1 per cent of the population at most is one estimate. With
many of their members coming from lower social classes, they were to be found throughout Judaea
and Galilee, especially in the synagogues. Their relatively low social status and their belief that there
would be a future resurrection of the body put them in strong opposition to the Sadducees. In contrast
to the picture given in the gospels, there was little fundamentally about which they disagreed with
Jesus. One disagreement there certainly was: over divorce. The Pharisees accepted that a husband
could divorce his wife if the marriage broke down: Jesus would reject divorce entirely, perhaps
because it had become a symbol of social disintegration in his native Galilee.
Prophets who claimed that they had direct contact with God could subvert learned disputation over
the Law. There were revered prophets, such as Jeremiah and Isaiah, who had warned the nation of the
consequences of their disobedience of Gods Law. The eight books of the Neviim, the second part of
the Hebrew scriptures, are those of the prophets and by the first century AD they appear to have
become authoritative in their own right. The gift of prophecy was often linked to the power to cast out
demons (exorcism) and to heal and effective miracle working of this kind by Hasidim, the devout,
was seen as confirmation of their prophetic powers. Through his reported miracles, Jesus was
affirming his status as a traditional Jewish Hasid, one whose piety extends beyond the mere
observance of the Torah.
The authorities, both the priestly caste and their Roman overlords, were suspicious of prophets.
They tended to bring unrest and often challenged the hierarchical structure of society. In his Jewish
Antiquities, Josephus tells of several deceivers and impostors who claimed divine inspiration in the
tense lead-up to the Jewish revolt of AD 66. Very often they were arrested and dealt with by their co-
religionists. Honi, a first-century BC miracle worker, was stoned to death by a mob in Jerusalem.
Was there ever a prophet you did not persecute? asks Stephen of his co-religionists in the Acts of the
Apostles (7:52) before he too is stoned by the mob. The crucifixion of Jesus was a more formal legal
process than this but he falls into the same pattern of the visionary who provides a distinctive but
threatening message and who suffers for it.
The rise of holy men with their own public followings was one response to increasing social
tension. Another was to withdraw and establish a counter-culture based, in the case of the Essenes, on
an idealisation of poverty and asceticism. The Essenes have long been known from references in the
Jewish writers Philo and Josephus and the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder. The Essenes, Pliny
wrote, are a unique people and admirable beyond all others in the whole world, without women and
renouncing love entirely, without money, and having for company only the palm trees. Totally
unexpected, however, was the discovery in the 1940s and 1950s of a preserved library (the Dead Sea
Scrolls) of the so-called Qumran community which must have been part of the Essene movement.
Here were almost all the texts of the Hebrew scriptures, some in multiple copies, dating from a
thousand years before any other known biblical manuscript. Even this early, there were discrepancies
between copies of the same text, showing that there was no strict adherence to any one authorised
version of scripture. The copyists felt able to reflect on their texts, paraphrase and even develop
them. This was not a religion that was stifled by ritual; it had the means of breaking through
convention and Christianity would never have emerged if it had been otherwise.
The Qumran community appears to have split off from mainstream Judaism under its Teacher of
Righteousness, turned its back on its fellow Jews and insisted on an exact observance of the Law.
The Essenes were celibate, strictly regulated their membership and believed in an imminent coming
of the Messiah, the son of David, who would bring the world to an end. The Scrolls therefore
provide evidence of the widespread longing for renewal and the expectation of its immediate fruition
which was current in the period. Many of the teachings of Jesus and Paul are similar to those of the
community, one reason why the discovery of the Scrolls has proved so important in widening our
understanding of the origins of Christianity. The Qumran community also provides a model of a body
of believers drawing on their own distinct traditions, notably the works of the prophet Enoch, which
may have been rejected by rival Jewish groups.
When early Christians talked of Jesus rising to be with the Father, they could only have imagined
him within the depiction of heaven they had absorbed through Judaism. It was not believed that God
ruled there alone. In early texts, Psalm 82, for instance, he is accompanied by other gods. God is a
judge among Gods (Psalm 82:1). Later these divine figures are described as angels and God is
referred to as enthroned with the heavenly host. So when the Book of Revelation talks of the angels of
the seven churches or the Letter to the Hebrews of Jesus being greater than the angels they are
reflecting a Jewish vision of the heavens. Heaven includes exalted angels with distinctive roles:
Michael the archangel sees over the people of Israel, Gabriel comes to Mary to announce the
conception of Jesus. John the Baptist is described as if he is a herald angel (Matthew 11:10). Not all
angels were benign. Angels of darkness, notably Satan, threatened the power of God. This sense of a
struggle between forces of light and goodness pervades the Dead Sea Scrolls. It provides a confused
picture of God, of one who is supposedly supreme but who can be thwarted by evil spirits. So even if
God really did want to protect his people, he might not be able to do so. This more fatalistic message
of the possible destruction of the light lives alongside the optimism of eventual victory.
The angels were given a distinct role as the messengers of God and his attendants in heaven. Could
God intervene in the world in a more immediate form? The figure of Wisdom, created by God at the
beginning of time as Proverbs puts it (8:22), appears to be such an intervention. Then there is the Son
of Man, described in Chapter Seven of Daniel: one like a human being coming with the clouds of
heaven. The texts are confused but some even suggest that there might be divine figures alongside
God. When Jesus says, in John 10:30, I and the Father are one, he may not be saying something
which was completely alien to Jewish thought, even though his listeners appeared affronted by the
claim. Equally God might use human beings as mediators between earth and heaven. So Moses is
given the role of revealing the Promised Land to the Jews and is talked of as ascending to heaven.
Elijah (2 Kings 2:11) is another example of one exalted by God he, too, ascends into heaven, in a
chariot. A fragment from the Dead Sea Scrolls suggests that the priest Melchizedek, the priest who
blessed Abraham, might also have taken his seat in the congregation of Gods. Perhaps these figures
might even have had an existence in heaven before their earthly life. The patriarch Jacob is quoted in
one prayer as the first born of every living thing to whom God gives life. One of the challenges
facing the first Christians was to find a place for Jesus within the other quasi-human and divine
figures that moved between heaven and earth.
A prophet might express himself through apocalyptic visions. The Greek word apokalypsis refers
to a special and direct revelation from God. The revelation need not relate to the end of the world but
in many cases the vision was eschatological, of the last things (the Greek word eschatos means at the
extremes of time or space), telling, in most cases, of the disorder that was about to break out on earth
before the reign of God began. It is difficult to understand the pressures and influences that led to the
growth of apocalypticism (which is common in Jewish texts between 200 BC and AD 100). Perhaps
the upheavals of the period led to a desperate need to understand the purpose of God or to a
particular receptivity towards those who claimed to know it. The most famous of the apocalyptic
texts, the Book of Revelation, claims to be a revelation, to John the Divine, from Jesus Christ but
Jesus himself was an apocalyptic prophet. The apocalyptic sayings might be rooted in prophecies
from earlier scriptures. The Dead Sea Scrolls show that interpretation of these technically known as
pesher was common within the Qumran community. The first (Jewish) Christians were to relate
their beliefs about Jesus to precedents within the Hebrew scriptures.
Beliefs in what might happen after an individuals death were varied. It is said that the only
definite reference to an afterlife in the Hebrew scriptures is Daniels assertion that many of them that
sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting
contempt (Chapter Twelve in the Book of Daniel). There is the assumption here, and in other texts,
that the soul lives on and may be in a temporary resting place until there is a final judgement. In the
Book of Revelation the souls of the martyred wait below an altar until the moment that they have been
vindicated by God (6:9). The Transfiguration, the appearance of Elijah and Moses alongside Jesus in
a vision, shows that prophets who had ascended to heaven could be seen again on earth. The visions
of Christ reported by Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians (Chapter Fifteen) are not unique but
suggest his own status as a prophet.
The Jews had, of course, their own scriptural account of Gods creation of the world in the Book
of Genesis. How the world would end was, on the other hand, the subject of intense debate. Some, the
Essenes, for instance, talked of a final battle between the forces of light and darkness, good Jews
fighting bad Jews and their allies such as the Philistines, ancient enemies of the state of Israel, others
of a general desolation in which the fields would be barren and the storehouses empty, even fountains
of water ceasing to flow. Then shall the heart of the earths inhabitants be changed and converted to a
different spirit. For evil shall be blotted out, and deceit shall be extinguished; faithfulness shall
flourish, and corruption shall be overcome, and truth, which has been so long without fruit, shall be
revealed (4 Ezra (after c.AD 70)). There would then, in similar narratives, be a great gathering in of
Jerusalems children from east and west and even from distant islands. What these narratives have in
common is the belief that there will be a coming which will result in a dramatically different society
but there is little agreement as to what form this will take whether there will be a judgement of good
and evil, whether all humankind will be welcomed, or only Jews, or some discrimination shown
between nations.
Equally there was disagreement over whether a human being, sent by God, perhaps, would usher
in this transformed world. The specific figure of the Messiah, as one who is anointed by God,
Christos in Greek, runs far back in Jewish history. From early times, the Messiah was identified with
kingship and a royal investiture marked by anointing with oil. Passages in Isaiah (11:15), Jeremiah
(33:1426) and Ezekiel (37:248) use royal imagery when talking of the Messiah and the title was
even given to a Gentile, Cyrus, the King of Kings of Persia, who freed the Jews from their
Babylonian captivity in the mid-sixth century BC. In the first century AD it was common among Jews to
talk of a coming messiah who is usually described as associated with the house of David. Some of
the Qumran scrolls also talk of two messiahs: one a king and one a priest. Messiahs were expected to
bring some form of political and military triumph. The Psalms of Solomon talk of the son of David,
a king who will shatter unrighteous rulers, destroy the pride of the sinner and then gather together a
holy people whom he shall lead in righteousness (Psalms of Solomon 17:55ff.). One tradition talks
of the Messiah as suffering for his people but in the scriptures this was not linked to his role of
saviour. The latter was a distinct development within Christianity, although the Romans and the
Jewish priesthood would always tend to see a self-proclaimed messiah as a disruptive and
threatening force.

Ever since the sixth century BC, when the Babylonians had conquered Jerusalem, Jews had migrated
from Judaea in a diaspora that had taken them across the eastern Mediterranean. Large Jewish
communities had been established in most of the major cities of the east, including Alexandria and
Antioch. Others had migrated as far west as Rome. The Jewish ethnarch (the term for a ruler of an
ethnic group) in Alexandria, perhaps the largest Jewish community outside Judaea, exercised
supervision over religious and commercial activities of his people as well as judging in internal
disputes. These arrangements were important so that the food laws could be complied with, the tax
for the Temple gathered and the Law upheld. With time the descendants of these exiles no longer
spoke Hebrew and the scriptures had been translated into Greek, the Septuagint (so called because of
the legend that seventy-two scholars had worked independently on the translation and had come up,
miraculously, with the same text). There were Jews, such as the philosopher Philo in Alexandria, who
were so at home with Greek learning that they were able to integrate it into Judaism. The works of the
great philosopher Plato, said Philo, with supreme confidence in his own faith, are no more than a
translation of the wisdom of Moses into Greek.
What is remarkable is the extent to which Jews were accepted within the cities, especially as they
had to reject the traditional religious rites, which bound a Greek city community together. The
exuberant displays of statues of Greek deities, which were a feature of all classical cities, must have
been deeply abhorrent to those who rejected all forms of idolatry. Yet an inscription from Phrygia
even refers to a Gentile woman donating a synagogue, much as a patron would build a pagan temple
for the glory of his or her city. In some cities synagogues and the gymnasia, the meeting places of the
Greeks where both sport and cultural life took place, were close together. The evidence from the Acts
of the Apostles suggests that when Jews complained to the magistrates about the intrusions of Paul
they were listened to. There was also the important group of God-fearers, sympathisers with
Judaism who may have attended the synagogues without adopting Jewish practices such as
circumcision. There is some evidence that they acted as go-betweens in the negotiations between
Jews and the city authorities. So, while there are reports of unrest, communal riots in Alexandria and
Rome, for instance, one can also envisage Jewish communities that had successfully negotiated a
status for themselves within the wider empire. The antiquity of their religion was a major factor in the
respect they commanded.
In a period when Greek culture was dominant in the eastern Mediterranean, some Hellenisation
of Judaea was inevitable. There was the annual return of many thousands of diaspora Jews for the
great festivals and Herod himself had used Greek administrators and erected Greek buildings a
theatre, amphitheatre and stadium in Jerusalem. Then there were commercial links as the tentacles
of the Greek trading networks extended inland. Of the inscriptions found on ossuaries of the period in
Jerusalem 40 per cent are in Greek, either on its own or in conjunction with a Jewish text. Acts
suggest that the Greek speakers may have had their own synagogues in the city (9:29).
Naturally there were tensions within Jerusalem between the Greek and native Jews and these play
an important part in the emergence of Christianity, as the Acts of the Apostles makes clear. It is much
more difficult to assess the impact of Greek culture outside Jerusalem, particularly in remote areas
such as Galilee. The archaeological evidence has not been supportive of its spread. Excavations in
even the larger cities of Galilee, Sepphoris, for example, show that culture remained overwhelmingly
Jewish and it would appear that Hellenisation in Galilee was superficial, certainly until AD 70. Jesus
and his followers would probably have known of Greek traders passing through Galilee but might
never have met them in rural areas or have been able to communicate with them if they had.
As this book continues, we will see how fertile a seedbed Judaism provided for the spread of
Christianity. The recent acknowledgement of this has brought a completely different approach to the
history of early Christianity, one this book attempts to follow. The development is entirely beneficial,
first in the sense that it is more historically accurate and second in that it offers a chance of
reconciliation and mutual acceptance where there have otherwise been hostility and rejection. There
is probably no other area of the history of early Christianity where so much rethinking has been, and
remains to be, done.
 CHAPTER THREE
Jesus before the Gospels
WHEN HERODS KINGDOM WAS DIVIDED AMONG HIS SONS AFTER his death in 4 BC, one of them, Herod
Antipas, was made tetrarch (literally ruler of a fourth part, of Herods original kingdom) of Galilee.
He remained in power until AD 39, for the whole of Jesus life. So, contrary to conventional belief,
Jesus was subject to a local ruler rather than directly to the Romans while he taught in Galilee. Herod
Antipas kingdom was a prosperous and well-populated region, its land was fertile and well
watered and a wide variety of crops fruits, vines, olives, grain and flax are recorded. There was
a flourishing fishing industry. The Galileans were Jews who, despite a distinctive accent, appear to
have differed little in their beliefs from those in Judaea to the south. However, Galilee was suffering
from the impact of Herod and his ruling clique who were involved in a major building programme,
including the restoration of the city of Sepphoris and the creation of a new capital Tiberias (named
after the emperor Tiberius, on whose support Herod Antipas survival ultimately depended).
Discontent was not all pervasive: Josephus description of Galilee, where he commanded Jewish
forces, gives no hint of any major unrest during Herods reign. But the evidence suggests a divided
society: a rich landowning elite consolidating their position by driving peasants from the land. There
seems to have been a mood of social disorientation, a feeling that the new rich who cared nothing for
the ideal of a shared community were destroying traditional Jewish ways of life. This expressed itself
in low-level unrest disruption rather than revolt. Leaders who represented or exploited the
discontent, such as John the Baptist, were soon arrested and executed by Herod. This was the world
in which Jesus grew up, almost certainly in the small village of Nazareth, a few miles from
Sepphoris. Recent excavations of Nazareth suggest that it was a community able to support itself and
it was sufficiently close to the road network not to be cut off from the wider world.1
Jesus himself never wrote any account of his ministry or his teachings. Most of his followers were
illiterate and there is no known document written by an eyewitness to Jesus life, although
eyewitnesses must have contributed material that was retained and later used in the gospels. The only
early Jewish source which records Jesus is Josephus who tells us that Jesus was responsible for
spectacular deeds, that he was handed over by the Jews to be crucified and that his followers, both
Jews and Greeks, were still active in Josephus day, the last decades of the first century. The apostle
Pauls own knowledge of Jesus life appears to have been very limited (and will be discussed further
in Chapters Four and Five). So one is left with the four canonical gospels, those attributed to Mark,
Matthew, Luke and John, which were written by educated Greeks, themselves outsiders to Judaea, but
not to Judaism, between AD 70 and AD 100. The gospels illustrate how four Christian writers
envisaged Jesus and his message in the period forty to seventy years after his death and this is why
they will be described more fully in a later chapter. They were heavily reliant on oral traditions,
some of which may have been written down, which they adapted to provide a coherent narrative for
their own audiences. Jesus death and resurrection are presented as the culminating moment of his life
on earth and it is probable that the details of his life are shaped towards this.
The four gospels are the only complete survivors of perhaps twenty gospels that were written. The
other gospels were lost or discarded but fragments of some have been recovered and might provide
useful historical evidence. A good example is the so-called Gospel of Peter, a part of which,
relating to the Passion and resurrection of Jesus, was found in Egypt in the nineteenth century. It is
dated to the early or mid-second century. It was still being read by Christians at the end of the second
century but ideas found within it were then declared heretical by the bishop of Antioch, Serapion,
possibly on the grounds that the gospel denied the suffering of Jesus on the cross. It was then
discarded.
The Gospel of Peter has material that overlaps with the earlier gospels, and so it may well draw
on a common pool of earlier oral tradition. For instance, verses 29 and 30, The elders became
fearful and went to Pilate and asked him: Give us some soldiers to guard his crypt for three days to
keep his disciples from coming to steal him. Otherwise the people may assume that he has been raised
from the dead and then harm us , are clearly from the same origin as verses 62 to 64 from Chapter
Twenty-seven of Matthews gospel. Again one finds the story of the figure waiting at the tomb to pass
on the information about the rising of Jesus to the visiting disciples which is recorded in all four
canonical gospels. Yet the gospel also has narrative detail not known elsewhere. In verses 31 and 38
of Peter it is recorded that, having arranged the guard, the elders went with the soldiers and stayed at
the tomb for three days. Crowds come out to visit the tomb on the Sabbath. The difficulty for the
historian lies in distinguishing between what might be very early and relevant historical material not
recorded elsewhere and material which the writer of Peter might have added himself to make the
narrative more dramatic. It is right to treat the gospel, as with any account made many years after the
event, with caution but it certainly should not be rejected as an independent historical source.2
Again the so-called Gospel of Thomas, found in a cache of documents at Nag Hammadi in Egypt
in 1945, records further sayings of Jesus alongside the repetition of some already known from the
gospels. It has its enthusiasts (some of whom appear to have been excited simply by having a new
source to work from) but again it is quite late, probably from the middle of the second century, and it
is impossible to know how many of its sayings are genuine. There are simply too many cases in the
ancient world of prominent teachers having sayings attributed to them by later admirers for the
gospel to be taken at face value. It provides no facts about Jesus actual ministry.
The predominant question in New Testament studies for the past two hundred years has been
whether the gospel sources provide an accurate picture of the life of Jesus. The gospels have
important discrepancies and omissions that make them difficult to use as historical texts and their
writers provide little critical assessment of their sources, as was commonly done by the more
sophisticated Greek historians of the period. There has been a tendency to fill in the omissions with
the Jesus we want, the Jesus that suits our needs, to replace the one we believe to be inadequately
portrayed in the gospels. A wise nineteenth-century theologian, George Tyrrell, remarked that if one
looked down a well in order to find the historical Jesus, the face that peered back at one from the
water was usually ones own!3
In the specific case of Jesus there are further problems to consider. Jesus and his disciples spoke
in Aramaic. Aramaic was the lingua franca of a region extending from the Levant coastline of the
eastern Mediterranean further eastward into Mesopotamia. We do know that some of Jesus sayings
were transmitted in the original Aramaic: an early second-century writer, Papias, records one
Matthew putting down sayings of Jesus in Aramaic in an ordered arrangement. It is tragic that these
sayings have not survived as they would have provided the closest we could come to hearing Jesus
original words. (This Matthew should not be confused with the Matthew of Matthews gospel which
was written in Greek.) In all the surviving sources, gospels and others, there are only twenty-six
Aramaic words attributed to Jesus which remain.4 One of these, marana tha, Come, O Lord,
recorded by Paul at the end of his First Letter to Corinthians (16:22), suggests that there were early
Christian groups praying in Aramaic. Otherwise native speaking Aramaic followers of Jesus have
disappeared from the record.
We do not know quite how the sayings of Jesus were translated from Aramaic into Greek. Greek
had spread into the eastern Mediterranean after the conquests of Alexander but was always the
language of an educated minority and, in this period, seldom spoken outside cities. Archaeological
evidence from the twenty years of digging at what appears to be the site of Bethsaida, where several
of the disciples were recruited, confirms the gospel accounts of Bethsaida as a fishing village, the
lonely place of Luke (9:13), and thus well beyond Greek influence.5 Evidence of the Greeks in
larger cities also seems limited. Excavations at the city of Sepphoris, an hours walk from Nazareth,
show most houses to have had ritual baths attached to them; in other words it was a Jewish rather than
a Greek city, certainly before AD 70.
So, on the present evidence one can hardly argue that the disciples would have learned Greek in
their native Galilee although some of them may have picked up the language in Jerusalem in the years
after the crucifixion. This reworking of Aramaic into Greek would most likely have been done in
Jerusalem when the disciples came into contact with Greek-speaking Jews. One has to assume that
there was interplay between Greek- and Aramaic-speaking followers of Jesus that led to the recasting
of his teachings into Greek. The difficulty here is that it is impossible to know what was lost,
culturally and linguistically, in the process. Few Greek-speaking Jews would have ventured into
Galilee and the earliest gospel, Mark, makes elementary mistakes about its geography. Whatever the
original sources on which they draw, the gospels were written by outsiders and misinterpretations of
the surviving evidence must be expected.
Then there is the problem of timing. The earliest gospel, that of Mark, is dated to perhaps AD 65,
the last of the canonical four, John, to 90 or possibly later. The biblical scholar Richard Bauckham
has argued for the existence of surviving eyewitnesses as late as the AD 60s and even 80s, over thirty
to fifty years after the crucifixion.6 These, he claims, would have been able to provide accurate
material for the gospel writers. It is difficult to measure life expectancy for this period but one
estimate is that only four men in every hundred lived beyond fifty. It would certainly be unusual to
find living eyewitnesses of Jesus life after AD 60 and it would be a matter of chance as to whether
any of these survivors could provide accurate and valuable information, especially as their first
language would have been Aramaic, not the Greek of the gospel writers. Studies of memory show
how recollections of past events can become extraordinarily distorted with time and that eyewitness
accounts recorded for the first time many years later are seldom trustworthy.7
The assumption must be that the gospel writers relied primarily on earlier oral and written
traditions originating from witnesses who had since died. In his prologue, Luke refers to traditions
handed down to us [i.e. not delivered to us in person] by the original eyewitnesses and servants of
the gospel. What cannot be known is how far these had developed over the three or four decades
between the crucifixion and the writing of the gospels. Only those records preserved in a fixed, say
written, form soon after the events are likely to provide historical accuracy and none are known to
survive.
These problems have so taxed scholars that some abandoned the task of finding a historical Jesus
from the gospels altogether. As the Lutheran scholar Rudolf Bultmann (18841976) put it: I do
indeed think that we can know now almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus, since
the Christian sources show no interest in either, are moreover fragmentary and often legendary; and
other sources about Jesus do not exist What has been written in the last hundred and fifty years
[i.e. before 1926] on the life of Jesus, his personality and the development of his inner life, is
fantastic and romantic.8 Bultmann and his contemporary Karl Barth (18861968) abandoned the
search for historical authenticity altogether, claiming that the scriptures were self-authenticating.
For many this represented an opting-out, an uncritical acceptance of scriptural authority that was
incompatible with serious scholarship. In the past twenty years, scholars have regained their
confidence. In fact, there has been an avalanche of books on the historical Jesus. Some remain
cautious, others are imaginative to the point of fantasy, others again burst with insights, which may or
may not reflect historical reality but which have helped stimulate further debate. In some accounts,
where Jesus seems to have been a 1960s hippy, a Che Guevara or a precursor of 1970s feminism,
George Tyrrells warning of the face looking back up from the well appears to have been justified.
Any search for a historical human Jesus requires a method of delving through the gospel
narratives, those of Matthew, Mark and Luke, the so-called synoptic gospels (synoptic from the
Greek because they share the same eye), to find the bedrock of the earliest oral traditions about him.
Matthew and Luke draw heavily on the earlier gospel of Mark but they also share passages that are
not in Mark, so it is possible to deduce that there must have been a document, which is even earlier
than Mark, on which they both relied. It has been given the prosaic title Q, from the German Quelle,
source and there are some 220 verses from Matthew and Luke that appear to come from it. It is
largely composed of sayings of Jesus. It is assumed that Q was originally written in Greek and
contains some of the earliest records of the Greek-speaking Christian-Jewish communities of
Jerusalem. Jesus confidently presents himself in Q as the chosen of God, responsible for bringing his
message that a transformation is to take place on earth. There is no mention in Q of the Passion or
resurrection or to Jesus as saviour so one can hardly call Q an early form of any gospel.
One might uncover the bedrock material in other ways. An event or teaching to be found in each of
the traditions recorded by John and the synoptic gospels is more likely to be authentic than one found
only in one or the other. The figure found by the women in the empty tomb chamber is a good
example. So too is an event which appears to conflict with a positive picture of Jesus and his
followers. The betrayal of Jesus by Judas, one of his disciples, or his denial by Peter after his trial
are detrimental to the image of early Christians and so it can be assumed that they were so embedded
in the original accounts as to prove irreplaceable as later versions were developed. Sayings of Jesus
which do not relate to any known Jewish teaching might also be original to him.
Such methods were used in a radical form by the so-called Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars
founded in 1985 who took each saying of Jesus, some would say out of its wider context, and then
subjected it to a ruthless analysis for its authenticity. Their results were colour coded with the most
authentic sayings being given a red marking, those not likely to be authentic a black one, and with
pink and grey representing the stages in between. The results tended to be dramatic. The gospel of
John ended up with no red sayings at all and only one pink. Mark only had one red saying. As the
Jesus Seminar loved publicising its findings, it attracted sensational headlines, among them, Bible
Scholars Determine Jesus Did Not Teach the Lords Prayer. There was more than a suspicion in
conservative theological circles that an enjoyment of debunking for debunkings sake had got out of
hand. With only 18 per cent of Jesus recorded sayings and 16 per cent of his recorded deeds being
given a red or pink status, he was left as a fragmented figure of whom very little could be said with
confidence.
 One must, however, start somewhere. E.P. Sanders, one of the most respected authorities on the
relationship between Judaism and Jesus and Paul, lists, in The Historical Figure of Jesus, what the
sources concur in saying about the life of Jesus.9 It is a limited set of facts and might be a
disappointment to those who use the gospels to inform and sustain their beliefs. First, there is
sufficient evidence to say that Jesus was born about 4 BC, roughly at the time that Herod the Great
died. The earliest gospel account, Mark, refers to him as no more than the Son of Mary and it is
clear that there was some uncertainty over his legitimacy. Not everyone accepts his birth in
Bethlehem (there are major problems, for instance, with Lukes narrative of events) but there seems
sufficient evidence that he was brought up in a family with other children in Nazareth.10
The first known public event in Jesus life is his baptism by John the Baptist after which he
selected a number of close disciples and began his own preaching in the smaller towns, villages and
the countryside of Galilee. The imminent coming of the Kingdom of God was an important feature of
his teaching. In about AD 30, he travelled to Jerusalem for the Passover and he caused some kind of
disturbance in the Temple. A final meeting with his disciples over a meal is well attested and he
was then arrested by the Jewish authorities, notably the high priest Caiaphas, and handed over for
execution by crucifixion at the command of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. On the third day after
his crucifixion and perhaps afterwards, he was seen by his disciples although what exactly they saw
is not clear. It was, however, sufficient for them to believe that he would return shortly to found the
promised kingdom and they formed a community to wait for his reappearance.
If these are the apparent historical facts, how can one place Jesus within the fragmenting society of
Galilee? The gospel writers do not detach Jesus from his geographical context and the small towns
and villages where he preached are often named, as are many of the individuals whom he healed or
talked with. The claim, still held by some, that Jesus never existed is never likely to succeed. Clearly
Jesus was a charismatic figure able to draw large crowds, even though there was also something of
the detached wanderer about him. He had the knack of presenting a complex idea as a parable, easy to
remember and to understand, in comparison, perhaps, to the more scholarly analysis of the Law at
which the Pharisees and scribes excelled. His healing ministry and his readiness to preach to the poor
place him as one who was responding to the social distress of his fellow Galileans. He reached
women and tax collectors at a time when both were socially ostracised, yet he remained rooted in the
countryside. Even though the city of Sepphoris is only four miles from Nazareth he is never recorded
as going there. His people were those of the villages and smaller towns. There is no evidence that he
ever married. This was unusual for a Jew. Marks gospel suggests some friction with his family: as
with most prophets there is much of the outsider about him.
Even so, it is difficult to find any teaching of Jesus that would offend Jews. Jesus would hardly
have built up such a large following if he had upset traditional believers and he appears committed to
the Law. Till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass away from the Law
(Matthew 5:18). There is no instance where Jesus permits what the Law clearly forbids and in some
instances, his views on divorce, for example, he may be stricter than the Law required. He certainly
had his disputes with those who encountered him but, as has been seen, this was in the nature of
Judaism where debate was endemic. He was clearly someone out of the ordinary, potentially
unsettling to the authorities because of his warning that society was about to be transformed and the
broad following his charismatic personality attracted, but in no way outside Jewish tradition.
There is no reason to doubt that Jesus knew the Hebrew scriptures well. He would have heard
them read week after week in his local synagogue and he may have been able to read selected texts
from the scrolls preserved there. The title of Rabbi, by which some of his disciples addressed him,
suggests that he was perceived as a man with some learning. The Jesus Seminar is probably
misguided in its rejection of any saying of Jesus that is to be found in scripture the effective use of
scriptures was a traditional means for a Jewish prophet to establish his authority. Like most readers
of the scriptures, then and now, he had his favourite texts. Isaiah is the most popular. Jesus quotes or
alludes to the prophet some forty times in the synoptic gospels as against fifteen quotations from
Deuteronomy and thirteen from the Psalms. Here he is confirming his credentials as an orthodox Jew
and his selection seems typical of the time. The most popular text in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in terms of
the number of copies preserved there, is Deuteronomy, while there are more than ten copies of Psalms
and Isaiah.11
The scholar who has done most to confirm Jesus Jewishness is Geza Vermes. His study, Jesus the
Jew caused a stir when it first came out in 1973 and he has followed with several books placing
Jesus religious teachings within Judaism.12 As a result of his intensive study of contemporary Jewish
texts, Vermes shone new light on the titles associated with Jesus and showed that while some of
these are recognition of his spiritual qualities, none in any way suggested he was seen as divine. For
instance, the title Son of Man, used so often by Jesus of himself that it must be authentic, was
normally meant in a modest yours truly sense. Again, the term Lord (maryah (Aramaic) or adonay
(Hebrew)) was used in different contexts as a designation, variously, of God, a secular dignitary, an
authoritative teacher or a person renowned for his supernatural power. The problem for Vermes, then,
was to discover which use was relevant for Jesus. He argued (in Jesus the Jew) that Matthew and
Mark related the title Lord predominantly to Jesus role as miracle worker while Luke used the term
primarily in the sense of a teacher and religious leader. Likewise the titles of Son of God and
Messiah had meanings within Judaism which do not accord Jesus any divinity. Vermes suggested
that the first Jews who tried to understand Jesus saw him as a Hasid, a devout man. There are
several of these recorded and their power to heal and to exorcise demons is often seen as proof of
their own holiness and acceptance by God.
This was an important step forward even though Vermes has been criticised for using Jewish
terminology that came from later texts. It is, however, not enough. Somehow the extraordinary
psychological impact of Jesus, an impact that was powerful enough to attract many followers in his
lifetime and sustain a continuing movement in his memory, has to be explained.
It seems worth concentrating on what might be called the apocalyptic teachings of Jesus (many, of
course, which come from Q).13 As we have seen, the Greek word apokalypsis refers to the revealing
of secrets, usually by a privileged person, although in practice these revelations often deal with a
transformed society or the end times of the world that follows it. Many of Jesus sayings tell of the
kingdom arriving on earth in the lifetime of his followers. It clearly had not by the time the gospel
writers were composing and they would never have included these sayings if they had not been part
of an authoritative early tradition which they could not ignore. Hence these sayings are usually
assumed to be authentic. So it is likely that the original teachings of Jesus relate to the imminent
coming of Gods kingdom on earth. By the time one has reached the end of the century beliefs in the
imminent arrival on earth of Gods kingdom had faded. Johns gospel, probably written in the 90s,
talks of believers being gathered in the kingdom of God in heaven, a good example of how the gospel
texts developed to meet the changing needs of the early Christian communities.
 The message begins when Jesus encounters John. John empowers Jesus through baptism. The
baptism is unlikely to be a later addition by the gospel writers. The story is common to all of them
and the implication that John, as the baptiser, is somehow spiritually superior to the one being
baptised does not fit well with beliefs about Jesus as they developed after the crucifixion. Surely this
reflects some actual event that marks the moment when Jesus starts spreading his message. It also ties
in the idea of ritual purification, an integral part of Jewish belief, of course, with the beginning of
Jesus ministry. After a short period of withdrawal and the arrest of John by Herod, Jesus begins at
once. The time is filled up and the Kingdom of God is almost here; repent and believe in the good
news! (Mark 1:15). The intensity with which Jesus now preaches the coming kingdom is such that he
is prepared not only to break his links to his own family but expects others to do the same. There is
no one who has left a house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or lands for my sake and the
sake of the good news, who will not receive them all back a hundred fold in the present time and in
the age that is coming, life that never ends (Mark 10:3951). Even the dead must be left unburied
(Luke 9:59). What is remarkable about Jesus teaching is that it is so open and confident. There were
other models, such as the Essenes, which would have involved a withdrawal of select followers from
society where they would have awaited the coming. Jesus creates no barriers between himself and his
listeners and he shows compassion to those for whom the kingdom is intended. No wonder some of
Jesus contemporaries believed that he was a prophet like one of the prophets of old (Mark 6:15).
The kingdom would involve a dramatic reversal of values. Those who are the have-nots, the
persecuted and the poor, will have the kingdom, but woe to you who are wealthy, for you have your
comfort now, woe to you who are full now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who are rejoicing
now, for you will mourn and weep (Luke 6:245). One would have to become like a little child, in
other words relinquish adult status, before entry is possible. Whoever humbles himself as this small
child, this is the one who is great in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:4). All will be subject to a
final judgement. While the epithet son of man appears normally to have been used by Jesus in the
yours truly sense, there is also a Son of Man described in the Book of Daniel (Chapter Seven) and
other accounts as a judge. A first-century BC (or earlier) text (1 Enoch 69) tells how the Son of Man
sat on the throne of his glory, and the whole judgement was given [by God] to the Son of Man, and he
will cause the sinners to pass away and be destroyed from the face of the earth. So, in referring to
himself as the Son of Man, Jesus may be declaring himself as Gods appointed judge of sinners.
Likewise accounts of the twelve disciples (this seems a strong tradition even if the gospel writers
disagree as to who the twelve are) suggest a return of the original twelve tribes of Israel over whom
judgement will be made. In the age to come, when the Son of Man is seated upon his glorious throne,
you [the disciples] will also sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matthew
19:28, cf. Luke 22:30). Jesus exorcisms and healings may also be seen as precursors of a kingdom
where demons would be conquered and sickness, often interpreted as a sign of sin, at an end. The
religion revealed by the authentic message of Jesus is straightforward without complex
dogmas,mythical images or self-centred mystical speculation. It resembles a race consisting only of
the final straight, demanding from the runners their last ounce of energy and with a winners medal
prepared for all the Jewish participants who cross the finishing line.14 Jesus appears to have taught
that only Jews would be subject to judgement or would benefit from the coming kingdom and in this
he was firmly within the tradition of Jewish apocalypticism.
Jesus had confidence in his message. In his ministry on earth his authority shines through.
Whatever the source of his confidence, it appears to have been absolute. As a result, the opposition
he attracted was equally strident. There would always be disputes within Judaism over the
boundaries of the Law but it was Jesus insistence that he had personal access to knowledge of Gods
intent, that this involved the coming of the kingdom and that he had a prominent role in ushering it in
that was bound to cause distrust. By whose authority do you teach? (Mark 11:28) was the question
that could not be avoided. One can hardly denigrate the questioners. How, indeed, did one pick and
choose between false and true prophets in an age of insecurity where all kinds of self-appointed
leaders drew on discontent and the deep-rooted desires for the coming of deliverance? Even those
who did believe in him would have cloaked him in their own political or spiritual needs. We had
been hoping that he was the man to liberate Israel, the men on their way to Emmaus comment to the
stranger they meet on the road (Luke 24:21).
If Jesus did believe that the kingdom was about to arrive, then his journey to Jerusalem was to be
expected as the culmination of his mission. The Temple was the symbol of Judaisms relationship
with God, the medium through which sacrifice could be made. Jesus entry into the Temple, in the
synoptic gospels in the final week of his life, and in John at the beginning of his ministry, is
associated with the overthrowing of the tables of the moneylenders and predictions of the destruction
of the temple building. As the Romans indeed systematically destroyed the Temple in AD 70 after the
Jewish revolt, it is possible that the gospel writers, writing after the event, simply added the story to
show how prescient a prophet Jesus was. However, there are earlier Jewish texts, including one from
the prophet Jeremiah, which see the destruction of the Temple as a sign of the anger of God against his
unfaithful people. The Essenes too had specifically rejected contact with the Temple, as they believed
its priests to be unworthy. It is possible that Jesus physical assault on the Temple workers and his
warnings are an expression of this hostility. In that case, it is hardly surprising that the conservative
priesthood, increasingly associated as they were with the rich who, he had preached, were destined
to suffer, would react against him and order his arrest. Yet, it is important perhaps not to make too
much of this. If an attack on the Temple had been a major part of Jesus message, his followers would
not have continued to worship there after his death as the Acts of the Apostles tells us they did.
Did Jesus know that he would die? Did he deliberately move up to Jerusalem so as to offer
himself as a sacrificial victim for the sins of mankind? There certainly had been precedents for a
death on behalf of the nation, the martyrs in the revolt of the Maccabees, for instance, and Jesus must
have known of them. (Their tombs were still respected in his day.) Yet if Jesus had expected the
kingdom to arrive on earth in his own lifetime, as has been argued above, his death would have
subverted not only his hopes of this but those of all his followers. It is hard to see what purpose it
would have served.
It is plausible to argue that Jesus behaved recklessly in Jerusalem on his final visit, innocent
perhaps of the implacability of the forces against him, over-confident of Gods imminent arrival and
then found himself arrested. In short, the crucifixion may have been the result of a serious
miscalculation. If so, that most haunting of cries, recorded in Matthew and Mark and in the original
Aramaic, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me, rings out with particular resonance. It was
only later, especially through the theology of Paul, that the emphasis shifted towards the crucifixion as
the defining moment of Jesus life. The doctrine of atonement, that the sacrificial death of Christ is the
means through which man is reconciled with God, is a later theological, rather than historical,
interpretation of the event that cannot be separated from a definition of humankind as deeply sinful
and in need of redemption.
Jesus presents himself as favoured by God to the extent that he has been given the role of
prophesying the coming of the kingdom. In this he can be related back to the major figures of the past
such as Moses and Elijah with whom, after all, he appears in the synoptic gospels at the
Transfiguration. It also seems unlikely that (during his lifetime) Jesus spoke of himself as the expected
Messiah. There is no mention of Jesus as Messiah in any of the Q sayings, for instance, and the first
recorded use of the word Christian, as in followers of Christos, the anointed one or Messiah, is from
Antioch not Jerusalem (although the title does appear to have been used early on in Jerusalem as
well). In so far as the Messiah was normally associated with military or political triumph, then it
seems most unlikely (and unrecorded) that Jesus would have seen himself in this role. There would
have been no quicker or more certain way of inviting retaliation from both priesthood and Jews.
Messiahs needed armed force in their support, as the self-proclaimed messiah Shimon Bar Kokhba
understood when he led a revolt against the Romans in AD 132. In short, Jesus probably spoke with
confidence of his role as the direct envoy and agent of God, the Son of God, a role transmitted to
him from God through the Holy Spirit, but as no more than this. John 6:15, where Jesus refuses to let
his disciples proclaim him a king, makes sense within this context.
With so few reliable early sources no one can recreate a historical Jesus with any confidence. It is
difficult to distinguish the terminology and beliefs that Jesus had adopted from his Jewish background
to buttress his authority among his Jewish listeners from those that were unique to him. How original
a prophet, if this is the right word to describe him, was he? However, it is certain that if one reads the
gospels, particularly the synoptic gospels, with the apocalyptic solution in mind the evidence does
have some coherence. There was something in Jesus presence, the confidence of his teaching, that
made his listeners believe that he did enjoy the special favour of God and so had the authority to
preach of the coming kingdom. Likewise the very claim would have offended, even outraged, many of
his listeners. With the hope of a coming messiah so pervasive, it was understandable that his
followers may also have expressed the possibility that he was the Messiah before the crucifixion,
although there is no clear evidence that he accepted this (and had good reasons for not doing so). The
apocalyptic approach explains the emotional intensity of the Jesus movement, the enormous hopes that
it raised of an immediate cataclysmic event and the fears among the isolated priesthood that they were
losing their authority to the extent that they had to plot a way of having Jesus pretensions exposed
through his death on the cross. If his death had not been recorded, he is likely to have been
remembered, if remembered at all, as yet another prophet or holy man in a tradition which was
centuries old. In his case, however, his prophecy that he would usher in Gods kingdom on earth
would never have materialised. The trauma of the crucifixion changed everything.
 CHAPTER FOUR
Breaking Away
THE FIRST CHRISTIANITIES

THE DEATH OF JESUS WAS A DEVASTATING BLOW. HOW CAN WE imagine the intense psychological trauma
that the disciples must have experienced? They had lived with him for many months, sharing the
hardships of the road, the welcoming crowds as well as the mockery of those who despised his
mission. Even in Galilee tensions were acute, especially after Herod Antipas execution of John the
Baptist. The message of the coming kingdom grew with the movement and the arrival in Jerusalem
must have seemed the culmination of all that had been promised. Where better for the kingdom to be
inaugurated? Any followers who believed Jesus was the Messiah may well have dreamed of some
form of political or military triumph in which the priestly authorities would be overthrown and Israel
liberated. Instead, Jesus had been arrested, subjected to a rudimentary trial and executed as a common
criminal by the most humiliating punishment of all, crucifixion.
Christian tradition has dwelled with a somewhat obsessive and prurient fixation on the details of
Christs crucifixion.1 There is no reason to believe that his agonies and humiliations were any
different from the thousands of other similar executions of which we know, but they were ghastly
enough. The pain of the nails would have been intensified by the weight of the body that had to be
lifted by the arms for breathing to continue. Death was normally by suffocation rather than through
loss of blood and it could be hastened by breaking the legs of the victim. Soldiers anxious to get off
duty would often have finished off men in this way. If they left the body alive, they risked the
possibility of rescue before death had occurred. No one seriously doubts that Jesus died on the cross,
probably directly at the hands of the soldiers who nailed him to it.
In many cases the mangled body would have been taken down and left as carrion for burial but
Jews were always anxious to fulfil the rituals of a proper burial before sundown on the day of death
and the gospel accounts agree that this is what happened to Jesus. It was a bleak moment for his
followers. They were adrift in a strange city, recognised as outsiders and totally insecure. All the
promises of the kingdom seemed destroyed. They had every reason to believe that they would be
picked up and dealt with as summarily as Jesus had been. As John puts it, the disciples shut
themselves behind locked doors for fear of the Jews. Some of the greatest and most moving works
of European art record the moment when Jesus body is lowered into the arms of his distraught family
and disciples.
It is hard to say what happened next. All agree that the wealthy Joseph of Arimathea buried the
body in the chamber which he had designated as his own tomb. According to Matthew (27: 626), the
location of the chamber was no secret as guards lent by Pilate to the priests for the purpose had been
stationed by it to ensure the body was not taken by his followers. In short, the priests placed
themselves in charge of the security of the site. This is hardly surprising as the priests must have
feared that Jesus body would become a focus for dissident worship.
Despite the supervision, three days later the tomb was found open. The accounts are consistent
enough for there to be little doubt on this point. In Mark and Matthew, a young man (Mark) or an angel
(Matthew), dressed in white, tells the women who have come to the tomb that Jesus has risen and
gone before them into Galilee and, in Matthew, Jesus himself appears to the women and says that he
will be seen in Galilee. In Luke and John, there are not one but two figures/angels in the tomb
chamber. The evidence certainly suggests an empty tomb, (John describes the linen wrappings of the
body lying there), but a tomb chamber which is not empty and a demand from a figure or figures
within that the disciples return to Galilee. The women are dumbfounded by the opened tomb and, in
their confusion, it seems that only when the figures within tell them that Jesus has risen that they
consider it a possibility. There is no reason to assume that the men inside were actually angels.
Caiaphas role in the resurrection must be explored. He was the man who masterminded the
crucifixion. He can hardly have abandoned any interest in the Jesus movement and the story in
Matthew that the priests took over responsibility for the tomb provides scriptural support for his
likely involvement. He had shown the Romans that he was not soft on disorder but he was sensitive to
risking his position with his co-religionists by bringing more bloodshed. His survival as a credible
authority with both Romans and his fellow Jews depended on a balancing act. It made sense to
attempt to thwart any emerging movement in memory of Jesus by sending his disciples back home.
Removing the body, making sure that the tomb was left open and leaving a message with a young
man that Jesus would reappear in Galilee would solve the problem without further brutality. The
traumatised disciples would, if the plan worked, simply move out of his sphere of authority back into
that of Herod Antipas. Once they were there it can hardly have mattered to Caiaphas what they
believed about Jesus. They could not cause the unrest in Jerusalem and jeopardise his status with the
Romans. What actually happened to Jesus body would have been of no interest to anyone so long as
the disciples believed it would reappear in some form in Galilee. It would have been important, of
course, for the priests to emphasise that Jesus was no longer physically there, but risen. Otherwise
rumours might have persisted that his body was still be to be found elsewhere in Jerusalem. Elijah
provides a precedent.
This is, of course, pure speculation, but it is a plausible account that does not conflict with the
events as they are known and explains the figures in the tomb chamber. If Caiaphas had arranged the
moving of the body, then one would have expected them to be priests and the description of their
clothes as white or dazzling corresponds to the white linen robes worn by the junior priesthood.
As further circumstantial evidence, there is the strange story recounted in Matthew (28:1115) of the
chief priests offering the soldiers who were, as Matthew had recorded a few verses earlier, guarding
the tomb on their behalf, a bribe to say that the disciples had moved the body. The priests go on to
promise that they will ensure the guards do not suffer for having let the body be stolen. If Caiaphas
had removed the body and his men had been seen doing so, it would make sense for the priests to
bribe the guards to tell a different story and protect them from Pilates anger if he heard that the body
was gone. This seems the most plausible explanation for this story.
The Gospel of Peter, a fragment of which covering the Passion, crucifixion and its aftermath was
discovered in the tomb of a Christian monk in Egypt at the end of the nineteenth century provides
further support for this hypothesis. The level of detail recorded suggests a careful writer rather than
one who is concerned with creating a version original to himself.2 There are two sections that are
particularly relevant. The first (verse 34) shows that crowds were indeed gathering around the tomb.
Early in the morning, as the Sabbath dawned, a crowd came from Jerusalem and the surrounding area
to see the sealed crypt. This presents a very different picture from the isolated tomb suggested in the
gospels but there is no reason why it should be a fabrication it is, in fact, just what one would
expect after Jesus tumultuous welcome into Jerusalem only the week before. One can understand why
Caiaphas feared continuing disorder.
The second (verses 379) describes how the soldiers see two men enter an opened tomb, and then
emerge supporting a third man. While the story is presented as an intervention from heaven (the two
supporters are recorded as having heads which reach up to the sky and a speaking cross follows
them), it may well, by the second century, have grown in the telling, and have been based on an actual
story of two men removing the body while the guards were awake.
It is perhaps significant that Jesus is not reported as emerging alone from the tomb. This is what
one would have expected from a resurrection, in the sense of a spontaneous happening that did not
need the support of others. (An image that would have been in most Jews minds would have been that
of Elijah ascending to heaven alone in his chariot (2 Kings 2:118).) The writer of Peter would
hardly have had any incentive for introducing the story at a later date. Arguably, the story derives,
with other verses of this gospel, from the earliest layer of eyewitness accounts. Again the figure in the
tomb, that most persistent of interlopers, reappears. At verse 44 he is even described entering the
tomb before the disciples arrive and at verse 55 there is an echo of the earlier gospel accounts when
he tells the women that Jesus has risen. For whatever reason, this story of one or two figures in the
chamber had a profound impact on all reporters of the empty tomb.
All one can conclude from this is that there is circumstantial evidence (and no more than this can
be argued from these very fragmentary and late sources) to suggest that Caiaphas put in place a plan
which would defuse the Jesus movement, or at least transfer it to Galilee, without further bloodshed.
For the disciples an empty tomb was a surprise. The women went expecting to carry out further care
of the body and were astonished when they found the tomb empty. The idea that a dead body could be
restored to life was not inconceivable as the story of Lazarus shows. There are similar accounts of
the prophets Elijah and Elisha bringing two dead boys to life. The synoptic gospels mention in
passing that there was a story circulating at the court of Herod Antipas that John the Baptist had been
reincarnated after his death as Jesus. As Herod puts it, This is John, whom I beheaded, raised from
the dead (Mark 6:1416, Matthew 14:12, Luke 9:79). Again Matthew (27:513) tells the story that
many saints appeared from their tombs in the earthquake that followed Jesus death and were seen
by inhabitants of Jerusalem. There is, in short, a mass of stories in the gospels of the apparently dead
being later seen alive. The resurrection of Jesus cannot, therefore, be isolated as an event. Bearing in
mind that John the Baptist was believed to have risen from the dead and been seen as a physical body,
one might even argue that it would have been strange if there had been no stories of a risen Jesus.
The gospel writers may also have shaped their accounts to fit Jesus into Jewish tradition. John
notes that the disciples did not grasp the scriptural precedents that Jesus would rise from the dead.
Yet scriptures there certainly were, of Jonah resting within the whale for three days before his
restoration to dry land, for instance, while Hosea describes how On the third day He will raise us up
and we shall be made whole by His favour. (In the early creeds, following Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:40,
the resurrection takes place on the third day according to the scriptures.)3 Judging from the number
of times that Jonah is represented in early Christian art, he may have been the most powerful
precedent.
Nor was the idea of rising into heaven unknown in the scriptures, as Elijahs ascent shows. Again,
a vision of a departed prophet to the faithful on earth is recorded in the Transfiguration accounts of
the New Testament in which Elijah and Moses appear alongside Jesus. So the possibility that a dead
body can be raised to life on earth, that a prophet could ascend into heaven and subsequently be seen
in a vision on earth is not unique to the story of Jesus. Nor was the idea unknown in the pagan world.
Writing seventy years later than the gospel accounts, Justin Martyr notes that when we say also that
the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ,
our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing
different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter.4 Jewish prophecy
and pagan myth both provided a context within which Jesus story made sense to both Jewish and
Gentile Christians. It was not seen as an unique event.
The earliest New Testament sources make no mention of a physical appearance by Jesus on earth
between his apparent resurrection to life and the ascension to heaven. Paul, and a number of other
New Testament texts (Acts 5:301 is a good example), imply that Jesus was simply raised from the
dead by God, as other prophets favoured of God had been. For those who knew the scriptural
precedents, this would have been an understandable interpretation of the empty tomb. The first
reference comes from Pauls First Letter to the Corinthians, written about AD 55, but even this is
twenty years after the events Paul describes. By now Jesus is referred to as the anointed one,
Christos in Greek. Paul does not mention the tradition of the empty tomb at all. He has heard of four
appearances or visions of Christ, none involving women and none related to any particular place,
although an appearance to James, the brother of Jesus, was presumably in Jerusalem. One of these, to
five hundred brethren, some of whom were no longer alive, is recorded nowhere else. Paul ends by
adding his own vision of Christ, on the road to Damascus, as a conversion experience. None of
these six accounts, three in Pauls letters and three in Acts, suggests a physical, in the sense of a
touchable, dimension to Jesus. In Acts he is simply a light with the power of speech, a clear contrast
with Lukes earlier gospel account of a Jesus of flesh and bones (Luke 24:39). Paul appears
determined to give himself the same status as the other audiences and it is significant that those
travelling with him did not see Jesus (Acts 9:19). The implication is that Jesus can appear in a
vision at will but only to those he favours, just as Moses and Elijah did at the Transfiguration. This is
not a physical person available to all.
Paul had never known Jesus and his letters suggest that he knew very little about the message he
preached, that the kingdom would come in his lifetime on earth. Instead he envisages a kingdom, soon
to come, on a higher spiritual plane. Those entering it will also be transformed into spiritual bodies
and the risen Christ is in a form, therefore, which reflects this. When Paul writes It is sown a
physical body; it is raised a spiritual body (1 Corinthians 15:44), he appears to be building on
earlier Jewish tradition that the physical body becomes transformed into a spiritual body after death.
So the visions described by Paul were not of the physical body of Jesus revived in a material form
but of a Jesus already transformed into a spiritual being, the first fruits of those who have fallen
asleep (1 Corinthians 15:20). His words at 1 Corinthians 15:50, Flesh and blood can never possess
the kingdom of God, and the perishable cannot possess immortality, make it quite clear that Paul is
not talking of a physical resurrection.
For Paul the risen Christ represents the hope of the future. It is through baptism into Christ that all
have the opportunity at the resurrection of the dead to share in the kingdom in heaven. It will be a
dramatic moment. We shall not all die, but we shall all be changed in a flash, in the twinkling of an
eye, at the last trumpet-call. For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead will be raised, immortal, and
we shall be changed. This perishable being must be clothed with the imperishable, and what is mortal
must be clothed with immortality (1 Corinthians 15:512). The resurrection is the link between the
old and the new heavenly kingdom. Christ will change our lowly body into the likeness of his
glorious body, by the power which enables him even to subject all things to himself (Philippians
3:2). Paul appears to see the heavenly bodies of those Christians who die as the ordinary body
subsumed and transformed by the spirit.5
If the resurrection appearances in Mark were, as many scholars believe, not added until the second
century6 one has to wait for a further thirty years, over fifty years after the crucifixion, for any
accounts of the risen Jesus appearing as a physical being on earth before he rises into heaven. These
are to be found in the gospels of Luke and Matthew. They draw on the accounts of the disciples and
their womenfolk and so it is important to detail that context in which the appearances took place.
Here again the Gospel of Peter may be of use. It records (verse 26) that Peter and his companions
went into hiding after the crucifixion, as they believed they were being searched for and that they
remained mourning and weeping day and night. This is no more than one would have expected. It
would have been impossible to witness the mutilation on a cross of an intimate friend, to deal with
the crushed body and not to be overwhelmed by the trauma. The lives of the disciples had already
been disrupted by their upheaval from family ties and their hometowns. With the added fear that they
might suffer the same fate as Jesus they would hardly have been able to sleep soundly. Here a text and
common sense correlate well.
In short, anyone trying to assess the state of mind of the disciples on the third day must imagine for
themselves what they would feel like after experiencing the crucifixion of a close friend, perhaps the
closest any of them had known, and fearing that they might themselves be picked up next. The most
likely outcome would be complete emotional exhaustion. Studies of trauma and sleep deprivation
suggest that the expected response is to lose touch with reality, even to hallucinate. Whether this
happened can only be surmised (and here it is not being insisted on as an explanation) but it cannot be
ignored as a possible factor in what happened next, the record of a number of appearances by Jesus a
short time after the crucifixion and their cessation after, according to Luke in the Acts of the Apostles,
forty days.7
The appearances of Jesus reported in the gospels are to a variety of witnesses, both in Galilee and
near Jerusalem, from as early as the third day after the crucifixion. These first appearances were to
women and they seem convincing enough to suggest that the belief in a resurrected Jesus grew from
initial reports by a group of women visiting the empty tomb where they had been told by the figures
within that Jesus had risen. Matthew, Mark (in the verses which appear to have been added later to
the original gospel) and John, who is normally seen as working from independent sources, all agree
on this, although Luke, like Paul, makes no mention of any appearances to women.
Lukes cited appearances are as follows: two disciples are walking with a stranger near Emmaus.
When they sit down with him at the table, they recognise him as Jesus but he promptly vanishes (in
other words, he is, in some way, supernatural). Later the same day Jesus appears to the disciples and
the rest of the company and walks with them as far as Bethany where he leaves them. In contrast to
the ethereal figure described by Paul, Luke is careful to record that Jesus was able to eat and was
made of flesh and bone. The problem is that Luke provides a different story in Acts, which was
probably written only a few years after his gospel. Here there are forty days of teaching during which
the disciples are told not to leave Jerusalem. It is not clear why Luke felt the need to provide
contrasting stories: the discrepancy between the one day of his gospel and the continuous presence of
forty days of Acts is a significant one.
As soon as one reads the other gospel writers the problems multiply, although perhaps no more
than would be expected from a variety of accounts collated by different authors so many years later.
The stranger/angel in Matthew and Mark tells the disciples that Jesus will go before them into Galilee
and indeed this is reinforced, in Matthew, by the women, Mary of Magdelene and the other Mary,
when they report a meeting with Jesus in the garden. In Matthew the disciples then make their way to
Galilee where Jesus appears to them. John also provides an account which includes the famous
recognition by Mary of Magdelene of Jesus in the garden, a meeting with the disciples that same
evening and another a week later. This is when Thomas touches Jesus wounds, certainly the most
vivid of the resurrection appearances. Then seven disciples meet him in Galilee.
The problems are twofold: one cannot reconcile Luke with the alternative version of John and
Matthew either the disciples remained in Jerusalem, as Jesus specifically tells them to in Luke, or
they did not. If Jesus was fully alive for forty days, with his first appearance by the tomb and his last
near Jerusalem, appearing to the disciples in both places, the journey between the two would have
taken up a substantial part of the forty days, but there is no mention of such a major undertaking. If, as
most scholars believe, Mark ends at 16:8, then his gospel contained no resurrection appearance at all.
It simply ended with the empty tomb.
With so much confusion within the gospel accounts, whether women saw Jesus or not, and whether
in Galilee or Jerusalem or both, whether he was a spiritual being (Paul) or a human one, able to eat
and display his wounds but also with the ability to vanish at will (Lukes Emmaus appearance) and go
through closed doors (John), it is impossible to provide a coherent narrative account of what was
seen.
If Jesus appeared as a touchable body, it was not at the expense of a supernatural ability to appear
or disappear at will or ascend into heaven when the time came. There is no hint in any account that he
remained consistently with the disciples unless one takes Lukes second narrative, in Acts, to imply
this. Nor can one know whether the story put forward in the gospels was shaped by the need to fit
with earlier prophecy, that of Hosea, for instance, of a resurrection taking place after three days. If the
primary aim of the gospel writers was to give Jesus sufficient status alongside other Jewish prophets
this is what one might expect. As always one must remember that all these accounts are translations
into Greek from the original Aramaic. The highlighting of different lead figures, Peter, the beloved
disciple, or Mary Magdalene, in the accounts may be seen as the later competition between their
followers for supremacy in the emerging Christianities of the later first century. There would have
been every incentive for the male apostles to claim I saw him too to maintain their status alongside
the women. In fact, it appears that Paul was told only the male version of the story when he met the
disciples in Jerusalem.
Most historians would differ from those biblical scholars and theologians who claim that the gaps
and discrepancies in the story can only be filled by a supernatural explanation. Tom Wright, for
instance, author of a monumental work, The Resurrection of the Son of God, asks what alternative
account can be offered which will explain the data for all the evidence and so challenge the right [
sic] of the bodily resurrection to be regarded as the necessary [ sic] one.8 So far as one can see from
his massive study, Wright does not consider the possible involvement of Caiaphas or the priests in the
removal of the body and makes no assessment of the nature and role of the man or men encountered by
the women inside the tomb. They perform such a pivotal role in the narrative that a full historical
investigation must discuss them. To ignore them, or assume that they were angels, as many
conventional accounts do, is impossible to justify.
 It is probable that no alternative account which will explain the data for all the evidence can ever
be offered. Enough is known about trauma and its effects on memory to know that very distorted
accounts of events can occur and that beliefs can quickly become consolidated independently of the
historical reality. Such beliefs are often held with unshakable conviction and sincerity. Most
historians are naturally sceptical about seeing any intervention of the supernatural in historical events
and are content to leave stories such as this as unexplained due to the lack of full and coherent
evidence. Whatever events did actually take place in those early days after the crucifixion, it was the
developing belief of what happened that there had been a resurrection of Jesus from the dead on
the third day according to the scriptures followed by a short period, forty days at most, in which he
made appearances to a favoured few (possibly according to Paul in Acts (13:31), only Galileans)
that now took precedence. Here Paul does not link his vision to these.
This involved, of course, a major reinterpretation of Jesus teachings. Tom Wright puts it well
when he writes that the early Christians reconstructed [and this seems to be the crucial word in view
of the probability that Jesus himself had taught of the coming of the kingdom on earth] their
worldview, their aims and agendas, around this belief so that it became, not merely an extra oddity,
bolted on to the outside of the worldview they already had, but the transforming principle, the string
that had pulled back the curtain, revealing Gods future as having already arrived in the present.9
While memories of what Jesus had actually taught could not be erased from the minds of those who
had heard him, what appears to have been the central theme, that he would inaugurate the immediate
coming of the kingdom on earth, now receded. Jesus had disappeared, apparently, it was now
believed, to heaven. His followers were left with the hope of a Second Coming of Jesus or the
inauguration of the kingdom, perhaps on earth, perhaps this time on a heavenly plane.
Today belief in the physical resurrection of Jesus is seen as the core of Christian belief. There has
been a tendency to take it out of the context of the times in which it is said to have happened and make
it a unique historical experience. However, it is possible to argue that Paul and the gospel writers
were placing Jesus within Jewish tradition rather than alienating him from it. Again one can assume
all too easily that the resurrection was the most important fact about Jesus within the early church. It
is interesting to read the New Testament texts in this regard. Paul mentions visions of the risen Jesus
in his letters to the Thessalonians, the Corinthians and Romans but in all the other letters of, or
attributed to, Paul there are only ten references to the terms resurrection or to rise. In the remaining
New Testament texts, there is a single reference to a general resurrection in the Book of Revelation
and a fuller reference to Jesus being raised in the First Letter of Peter but that is all. Jesus had
certainly risen, but rising was not unique to him, and the stress on the transformation from a
physical to a spiritual body (Paul) may have been a means of emphasising his status as a prophet,
like one of the prophets of old, as Mark puts it (6:15). Perhaps the most controversial claim was
that he was believed to have risen as high as the right hand of the Father, a major theme of, for
instance, the Letter to the Hebrews. It was this belief which led to the martyrdom of Stephen (Acts
7:556). It was how to offer him appropriate worship in his new elevated, but contested, status that
became the primary concern of the Christian communities.10
The earliest Jesus movement is described in the Acts of the Apostles, written in Greek by Luke,
probably in the AD 80s. Historians have found Acts difficult to evaluate. There is consensus that it is a
second volume of Lukes history, his gospel being the first, but the kind of narrative it represents and
the purpose of its writer is hotly disputed. So much of the abundant Greek literature of the period has
been lost that it has been hard to relate Acts to any specific genre. Above all it is not clear to what
degree Acts can be trusted as an accurate historical record, especially when it reaches its main theme,
the missionary journeys of Paul. There are many scholars who reject its historical value altogether.
However, it can be said with relative confidence that a self-defined community of men and
women, many from Galilee, who preserved the memory of Jesus, emerged in Jerusalem. Peter took
the leading role at first and the community retained the innermost group of twelve, electing one
Matthias to fill the place of Judas on the grounds that he had been a witness of Jesus teaching since
his baptism by John. At the subsequent Jewish feast of Pentecost, when they were meeting in a private
house, they received a strong sense that the Holy Spirit was with them and this gave them the
confidence to proclaim their beliefs to the myriad Jews, from the diaspora communities, who were
thronging Jerusalem during the festival. While Acts describes this community as a stable group,
apparently at home in Jerusalem, the immediate followers of Jesus were, of course, Galileans,
uprooted from friends and family and still coming to terms with the traumas they had suffered. Were
they really able to proselytise as freely and confidently as Acts suggests?
All, however, were Jews and the preaching of the fledgling movement, as reported in Acts,
remained deeply rooted in Judaism. The traditional Jewish demands obedience to the Law,
insistence on correct diet and circumcision were retained. Whatever Jesus may have done in the
Temple precincts before his arrest, it was not sufficient to break the ritual of worship for them. Its
members attended the Temple and gathered in the Portico of Solomon alongside it. The model of
synagogue worship, centred on the reading and discussion of the scriptures, probably guided their
first meetings. When the apostles were arraigned before the Sanhedrin, Peter stressed that Jesus had
come for the Jews. He is it whom God has exalted with his own right hand as leader and saviour, to
grant Israel repentance and forgiveness of sins (Acts 5:31). Jesus is still perceived as confined to
Judaism.
The groups persistent commemoration of Jesus was likely to have caused continuing concern.
Caiaphas remained high priest until AD 37 and the conservative priesthood would have remembered
Jesus as a troublemaker. If Caiaphas had hoped that all Jesus followers would walk back home to
Galilee he was mistaken. While many must have returned to assume their family responsibilities and
their livelihoods, the inner circle remained in Jerusalem. There would have been other grounds for
Jewish suspicion. The power of Jesus teachings, his agonised death, and beliefs that he had risen
from the dead impelled his disciples to find ways of expressing their devotion to his memory. The
problem lay in making any form of coherence out of confused and raw feelings that must have gripped
them in the months following the crucifixion. It was probably very soon after the crucifixion that the
disciples began to envisage Jesus as someone of different order from any other Jewish prophet of
whom they had heard. Yet the only terminology available to them, as observant Jews, was that of the
scriptures. Figures such as Moses and Elijah, for instance, had been honoured as the chosen of God;
yet never at the expense of the status of God as the only true divine force. Somehow an elevated role
had to be conceived which would give Jesus some kind of recognition without compromising Jewish
monotheism.11
Pauls Letter to the Philippians provides an early attempt at definition. The letter probably dates
from as late as 61 but Paul appears to have incorporated an early Christian hymn into his narrative
(Philippians 2:611). The hymn suggests that Jesus had always enjoyed some form of divine nature
but never approached equality with God. This is an important point because it assumes that he was
believed to have been pre-existent with God, instead of being, for instance, a human being adopted by
God only after his birth. (The question, which was to become crucial in later centuries, was when this
pre-existence began from eternity or at a moment of later creation.) In his human life, the hymn
goes on, he made himself like a slave and after his death on the cross he was raised by God and given
a name above all names so that everyone should revere and confess that he is Lord. The term kyrios,
Lord, the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew adonay and the Aramaic maryah, is used in different
senses but the most likely here is as one that associates him with God. So already there has emerged a
definition of Jesus in which, unlike that of any other figure in Jewish theology, he has a quasi-divine
status. This transformation so early makes good sense its radical nature is more likely to have been
born in the emotional turmoil of the post-crucifixion crisis than later when the trauma had eased.
There is no mention here of his resurrection as a physical body rather Paul describes him as
bearing the human likeness, revealed in human shape as if his humanity was always subservient to
his divinity.
There is also the development of the concept of the Messiah, Christos, the anointed one, in
Greek. Although the word Christian is first attested in Antioch rather than Jerusalem, Acts suggests
that Messiah may have been used in Jerusalem from early on. Whether it was universal remains
unclear. The sayings that make up the hypothetical Q do not contain the title at all. However, by the
time of Paul, who uses the word Christ no less than 270 times in his core letters, the title can be
used alongside Jesus name (Jesus Christ) or even substituted for it. The Messiah was traditionally a
royal figure associated with political and military triumph but this could not be said of Jesus. It
appears that the early church came to believe instead that it was the death of Jesus and, above all, his
rising from the dead according to the scriptures that gave him messianic status.12
Created as they were out of a matrix of memories of Jesus life and teaching, emotional reactions
to his death and scriptural sources, one can hardly expect these formulations to have any theological
coherence. It is almost as if all the traditional Jewish titles given to those favoured by God Son of
God, Lord, Son of Man, Messiah were appropriated and applied to Jesus even though they
came from different sources and traditions. The theological complexity, some would say confusion, of
Christian belief was established early! This is understandable. The emotional impact of the events
was such that the early Christians were struggling to fit their experience of Jesus Christ as some kind
of elevated being with Jewish terminology that appeared increasingly inadequate. Even if the titles
did not fit easily with each other, they overlapped sufficiently to create a being who had no equivalent
in earlier Jewish history.
These tentative formulations underpinned the foundation of the early church. While these first
Christians attended the Temple and celebrated festivals such as Pentecost, they also developed their
own ritual ceremonies. In Acts (2:3841), it is recorded that converts were baptised. The concept of
purification was intrinsic to Jewish ritual and was required on many occasions, after handling a
corpse or preparing for sacrifice, for instance. Christian baptism differed from Jewish purification in
that the ritual of baptism provided a once and for all initiation into the community. The baptism of
Jesus by John the Baptist provided the model, although it is probable that the baptism is given such
prominence by the gospel writers because it reinforced the practice as they saw it around them in the
early church. Just as Jesus own ministry was inaugurated with baptism by John, so initiates were
welcomed into the community through water, probably, again, following Jewish precedents, with total
immersion. The earliest records suggest that baptism also became associated with the rising of Jesus
from the dead. Paul was to talk, for instance, of Christians being baptised into Christ Jesus and into
his death (Romans 6:3).
 The second important ritual was a commemorative meal, the Eucharist, from the Greek for
thanksgiving. The ritual of eating together in a religious context is to be found throughout the ancient
world and certainly the miracle of the loaves and the fishes may have been seen in this context (as its
frequent representation in early Christian art suggests).13 The Last Supper, as recorded in the gospels,
would have been instantly recognisable to any Greek reader in terms of a teacher surrounded by his
loyal male students (and some early catacomb art reflects this). Funeral meals held in commemoration
of the dead are also found in both Greek and Jewish culture. The text known as the Messianic Rule
from Qumran talks of the Priest who shall bless the first-fruits of bread and wine and shall be the
first to extend his hand over the bread .14 Just as these meals were important, so too was the
humiliation for anyone deliberately excluded from one. As Paul recognised when dealing with the
recalcitrant Corinthians, the threat of exclusion was a weapon which could be used to reinforce the
cohesion of the group (1 Corinthians 5).
Paul confirms in his First Letter to the Corinthians that the Eucharist meal is well established by
the 50s as a ritual centred on memories of Jesus. The commemoration is held in the homes of those
well off enough to provide the space for a shared meal. From the earliest times it appears that Christ
was seen to be present as a living force. Paul tells the Corinthians that they are participating in the
body and blood of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:16). This suggests that the congregation may even have
believed in some form of transformation into a spiritual body through the common meal of bread and
wine. It is likely that it was in discussion after the Eucharist that the participants shared their
memories of Jesus and attempted some evaluation of his mission and death; just as the Passover meal
traditionally included accounts of the events involved in the flight from Egypt. Even if the participants
were illiterate, there would have been opportunities for scribes to write these memories down
although no texts survive from this period. This may well have been the genesis of the gospel
accounts and one reason why such a significant part of the gospels was devoted to the Passion. The
death of Jesus is a deliverance that echoes that deliverance (from slavery in Egypt) which the
Passover commemorates. These ceremonies existed alongside prayers, hymns and invocations of
Christ, hints of which are to be found in the letters of Paul.
Early in the history of the church there was a major crisis, which Luke felt deserved to be reported
in full. The Jesus movement appears to have drawn supporters from both the native Aramaic-speaking
Jews and the many Greek-speaking Jews, the Hellenists, some of whom would also have been
permanent inhabitants of Jerusalem, their numbers swelled at the great feasts by Greek speakers of the
diaspora. Within one of the synagogues of the Greek speakers, which appears to have catered
specifically for freedmen (those who had been released from slavery), a dispute blew up over
allegations that one of its members, an impressive speaker by the name of Stephen, had been
preaching that Jesus would destroy the Temple and alter the Law. Such was the outcry that Stephen
was hauled before the Sanhedrin.
In his speech, which Luke recorded in full, Stephen defends himself with a long survey of Jewish
history in which he compares his audience to those who had persecuted prophets in the past. Now
they have betrayed and murdered Jesus. The crucial moment comes when he claims to have a vision
of Jesus standing at Gods right hand. This elevation of Jesus was simply too much for those Jews
outside the Jesus movement. Stephen was set upon and stoned to death. Luke reports that Paul (then
known as Saul) was a participant in that he looked after the clothes of the assailants. It is possible that
Paul, if he himself were the son of a freedman (see p. 49), would have attended this same synagogue
and his zeal for persecution could have been aroused by his personal abhorrence of Stephens views.
 Stephens death appears to have been the catalyst for an outbreak of persecution. Although the
original apostles stayed in Jerusalem, many of their followers were scattered into the countryside. So
began the missions outside Jerusalem. At first they were confined to Judaea and Samaria but then
spread north, along the Phoenician coast to Antioch and across the water to Cyprus. Luke records that
they preached only to Jews although he also records the story of a centurion called Cornelius, a
Gentile but a friend of the Jews, who was converted by Peter in Caesarea (Acts 10). It is one of two
instances; the other takes place in Antioch, where Peter appears to have crossed the traditional
boundaries by consorting with Gentiles.
If one is searching for authority in the church in the 40s and 50s it remained with the original
apostles and thus in Jerusalem. They had been chosen by Jesus in person and had an awareness of
what he had taught that no outsider to the movement could ever acquire. They had experienced the
agony of the crucifixion at first hand and maintained the movement for many years in an increasingly
hostile environment. Their stance on circumcision and other traditional Jewish requirements was also
understandable. They had only known Jesus as a practising Jew; there had been nothing in his
teaching to suggest that the Law and its requirements should be abrogated or that Gentiles who
converted to Christianity should be excused from them. The story of Cornelius suggests, however, that
those Gentiles close to the Jews were now becoming interested in Jesus and so the issue of whether
they could be excused ritual requirements was to become a live one.
In the 40s James, the brother of Jesus, emerged as the leader of the Jewish Christians. James has
been overshadowed partly because in the Catholic tradition his mother is believed to have been
perpetually virgin and thus a brother of Jesus was impossible. It is hard for a historian to sustain this
view, although Mark suggests that James, along with his mother and siblings, was rejected by Jesus
during his lifetime (at 3:31). James would have had the advantage of his family connection and
knowledge of Jesus life before his baptism by John and his status would have risen alongside that of
his brother. Doubtless his own personality was important in keeping the movement intact. Peter may
simply have been unable to cope with the pressures imposed on him, his own status diminishing as the
earliest disciples began to die off or disperse. His ambivalence towards the Gentiles may also have
lost him support. By the time Paul reaches Jerusalem for the last time, in about AD 59, Peter is no
longer mentioned as a Jerusalem leader. Tradition has it, of course, that by this time he had migrated
to Rome where he was to be martyred.
However, there is another report of Peters presence in Antioch. Antioch, the capital of the
Roman province of Syria, was one of the finest cities of the eastern Mediterranean. On its coins it
referred to itself as the capital of the east and its Roman overlords had embellished it. It had always
had a large Jewish population and some form of church, presumably based within the Jewish
community, like that in Jerusalem, had become established there. In fact, Luke tells us that Antioch
was the very first city where the term Christian was used.
It was here that there were outsiders drawn to the movement. Luke specifically notes natives of
Cyprus and Cyrene. It was they who began spreading the good news of the Lord Jesus to Gentiles (a
reminder that Paul was not the only one doing this). So, perhaps for the first time on a significant
scale, the movement had to confront the problem of the treatment of Gentiles. When Peter arrived in
the city from Jerusalem, he found himself dealing face to face with the Gentile Christians. He began
eating with them, once again crossing the boundaries of acceptable Jewish behaviour. Then a
Jerusalem delegation arrived from James and they were furious at what they saw. Peter gave way
under the pressure, much as he had done after Jesus arrest, and broke off his relationship with the
Gentiles.
One man who was watching the scene was outraged in his turn. He had met Peter before in
Jerusalem and he saw his apparent rejection of the Gentile converts as an affront to them. Peter was
clearly in the wrong, he recorded. This was none other than the Paul whom we have already
encountered in Jerusalem. He was now no longer a persecutor but a committed Christian who had
dedicated himself to the mission to the Gentiles. Peter threatened everything he stood for. No wonder
Paul, who was never one to keep his emotions to himself, opposed him to his face.
 CHAPTER FIVE
What Did Paul Achieve?
PAUL DOMINATES ANY HISTORY OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. HE IS THE loner who made Christianity
universal, the authoritarian who wrote in terms of the equality of all before God. He transformed the
spiritual teacher of Galilee into the crucified and risen Christ. Yet it is impossible to write more than
a fragmentary account of his life. The sources that survive, perhaps six or seven letters of the many he
must have written, and the narrative of his activities in the Acts of the Apostles, are not full enough
even to provide an accurate chronology. The context in which his letters were composed can only be
guessed at and it is difficult to find a consistent theology in them. Even though there is a tradition
which portrays Paul as if he were a detached scholar, his theology is deeply rooted in his frustrations.
His personality was complicated and his relationships with others were often tempestuous. All this
makes it challenging to provide a fair assessment of his achievement.1
As for many teachers in the Greek world, Pauls fame meant that a variety of texts were later
ascribed to him. Only seven of the so-called Pauline letters of the New Testament are now fully
accepted as genuine: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, Philippians and the
short Letter to Philemon. The earliest surviving letter, that to the Galatians, was probably written in
AD 49; the most mature and influential statement of Pauls theology, the Letter to the Romans, in about
57 and his last surviving letter, to the Philippians in 61 or 62.2 These letters provide direct evidence
of Pauls responses to the Christian communities with whom he had contact. They are the primary
sources for Pauls life and beliefs even if one can never know how representative they are of his total
output. Although the personality of Paul keeps breaking through (in all its rawness in Chapter Four of
1 Corinthians or the Letter to the Galatians, for instance) and at times his eloquence reaches an
intensity which places the letters among the finer literary achievements of the ancient world, they are
steeped in the rhetorical conventions of his time. Historical accuracy may have been sacrificed to the
self-dramatisation that was necessary to make an impact on his readers. As a documentary account of
events they must be treated with caution.
The Acts of the Apostles, the second half of which features some account of Pauls travels and his
encounters with the emerging Christian communities, was probably written some thirty years after the
events it describes. Its author, Luke, may even have been a companion of Paul, or close to those who
were, and he covers events in relative detail from between AD 50 and 60 when Paul arrives, under
armed escort, in Rome. It is not known how many letters of Paul, if any, Luke himself had seen or
whether he had seen others which are now lost to us. (There is not a single mention of Pauls letter
writing in Acts.) Many scholars discount Acts as accurate history. It is certainly true that Acts is
selective, many events are not clearly described and Luke may have created a much more harmonised
life of Paul than the letters suggest. One estimate is that while Chapters One to Eight cover the events
of three years, Chapters Nine to Twenty-eight stretch over twenty-five and concentrate on relatively
few events within that time span. The tensions with the Corinthians, which play a major part in Pauls
letters, are not mentioned in Acts at all. In short Luke never set out to provide a biography of Paul:
rather his aim, if one takes the text as a whole, is to describe the progress of the gospel, highlighting
the events which he believed contributed to this. Yet, there is a narrative that does outline journeys of
Paul that can be traced on the map. Above all Acts provides a vivid picture of the struggle that Paul
had with the communities he visited and the turbulence of his experiences fits well with the passion of
the letters.
 Even Pauls birth date can only be guessed at. Acts refers to Paul as young at the time he began
persecuting Christians in the AD 30s and his gruelling missionary journeys of the 50s suggest a man no
older than his forties so the first decade of the century seems most plausible.3 His background and
education reflect the melting pot that the east had become. He was born, as a Jew, in Tarsus, a lively
trading city that was capital of the Roman province of Cilicia. He may have absorbed, in his
childhood or later, an education in rhetoric, including the effective writing of letters, and a smattering
of Greek philosophy, above all Stoicism and, perhaps, Platonism. He was sent to study in Jerusalem
at the school of the well-known teacher Gamaliel. He must have picked up Aramaic while he was
living in Jerusalem but he later refers to himself as a Pharisee and this suggests that he had made a
rigorous study of the Torah in the original Hebrew. Nevertheless his own use of scriptures in his
letters always draws on the Greek version, the Septuagint.
It is hard to imagine a greater contrast in Jewish backgrounds than that between Paul and Jesus.
Paul was a Roman citizen, brought up in a Greek-speaking city and at ease with urban life. He was
well educated and aware of two competing cultures, Greek and Jewish. Jesus had no education other
than what he had absorbed from the synagogue, his background was rural and remote from city life,
and his region appears to have been untouched by the Greeks. Paul was never tolerant of others and
was unlikely to have been able to grasp, or even be sympathetic to, the very different context of rural
Galilean Judaism. Jesus life and teachings simply do not figure in his letters and speeches.
Perhaps the most intriguing feature of Pauls background is his Roman citizenship. By this time the
whole of the free population of Italy had been granted Roman citizenship and many Italians had
migrated to the Greek east either as colonists (Philippi was an established colony of citizens, for
instance), merchants or administrators. Roman citizenship among the native populations of the east, on
the other hand, was still very rare. Citizenship could be granted to distinguished individuals, as it was
for Josephus, the Jewish historian favoured by the Romans, but Paul would never have qualified on
his own merits. However, it was a remarkable feature of Roman law that once a master freed his
slaves their descendants acquired full citizenship. In all likelihood Paul was the son of a freedman,
one released from slavery by a Roman master. When he was in Jerusalem he may even have attended
the Synagogue of the Freedman mentioned in Acts 6:7 Jews from Cilicia are specifically
mentioned as members of its congregation. His references to slavery, the coming of Christ for all,
slave and free, and his support for Onesimus, the escaped slave on behalf of whom he writes to his
owner Philemon, need to be read in light of this probability. To have an elevated position as a Roman
citizen but only because ones father had been a slave left one in an ambiguous social position.
Perhaps this explains why Paul so often felt himself an outsider.
Paul first appears in Acts as Saul. His name probably derives from Saul, the first king of Israel,
the most prominent member of his tribe, that of Benjamin. It is under this name that he holds the coats
of those stoning Stephen. His zeal for his Jewish faith has turned him into a vigilante ready to exploit
the growing unease with the emerging Christian communities. He comes across as an outspoken and
violent protagonist, something of a loner (there is no evidence that he ever married and he is
puritanical about sex) and probably obsessive about the mastering of texts. It is a type one can
recognise but no one could have predicted the way in which his life was to be transformed by Christ.
The dramatic moment of his conversion comes, perhaps in 34, on the road to Damascus, where
Paul was planning to extend his campaign against Christians. Christ appears as if in a vision, berating
Paul for his persecutions. All the accounts, in the letters and in Acts, date from more than twenty
years later but they retain the abruptness of the event. I was apprehended by Christ Jesus, as Paul
puts it in Philemon. It is impossible to retrieve the psychological underpinnings of the conversion but
a powerful and influential element of the experience as Paul reflects on it was that he, an undoubted
sinner, perhaps already wracked with guilt, had been picked out for salvation. He equates his own
vision of Christ with that of the apostles. Pauls seems a far-fetched, even contrived, interpretation
but it was his confidence in his personal mission that was to drive his activities in the years to come.
He believed that he was the agent through whom the divine plan would unfold.
The conversion of Paul did not involve a change from one religion to another. If Paul had not
considered himself still a Jew he would never, as a Roman citizen, have submitted himself to Jewish
floggings as he did, nor refer, in Galatians (3:289), to all believers in Christ as Abrahams
offspring. Although Pauls relationship with Judaism, and certainly with Jews, was to be tortuous, he
remained a Jew who attempted to portray Christ as some kind of fulfilment of Jewish history, one
which would extend beyond the Law and the requirements of circumcision and Jewish diet into the
Gentile world. He believed passionately that the Second Coming was imminent and that it was
possible to find a place for Gentiles in salvation. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer
slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Jesus Christ, as the famous
passage in Galatians (3:28) puts it. In this he was venturing beyond the margins of conventional
Judaism. He was in a theological no-mans-land and the boundaries between traditional Judaism,
Jewish Christianity as it was emerging in Jerusalem and his own teachings remained without clear
definition. It was an extraordinary position to be in, one which exposed Paul to ostracism from Jews
and hardly ensured a welcome from more than a tiny minority of Gentiles.
Three years after his conversion Paul made a visit to Jerusalem to meet Peter and James. It must
have been an uneasy occasion. Peter and James had unchallengeable status as the chosen companions
of Jesus and founders of the movement in his memory. There was little role for an outsider in their
circle, especially one who had persecuted Christians, other than as repentant disciple. Were they even
able to communicate with each other in a shared language, let alone understand each others
perspectives? The Jerusalem apostles had known Jesus intimately as a human being; Paul could only
contribute an apparent vision of Jesus as the Christ. Even if Paul did learn something of Jesus life it
made little impact on him. There is scarcely a reference in any of the letters to any of Jesus teachings,
other than, perhaps significantly, to his prohibition of divorce.
At some point Paul must have shifted his focus to the symbolic importance of Christs death and
resurrection. His psychological make-up may have been of crucial importance here. Paul identifies
strongly with Jesus alone in agony on the cross, a reflection perhaps of his own isolation. Yet here
was a theological impasse. Like other Christians Paul had to confront the problem of a messiah who
had broken with conventional expectations of messiahship by dying. By the time he writes Galatians,
Paul has transformed Jesus into a form of messiah who is radically different from the one expected.
Rather than triumphing on earth through his majesty he had chosen to die because humankind was
sinful (see Galatians 1:4, 2:20). He had risen to his Father in heaven, his humanity transformed in the
process (see later Romans 1:34), but his return to earth was imminent.
This personal and deeply felt response by Paul did not gain him any standing with the Jerusalem
Christians. He left after a fortnight. There is now a long gap in the record, from, say, AD 37, when he
met the disciples in Jerusalem, to 48. It remains uncharted. Paul may have mastered his trade as tent
maker, made incipient missionary journeys or returned to Tarsus to further his education. He must
have had some reputation by the end of the period as it was in his home city that he was tracked down
by a fellow Christian, Barnabas, described in Acts as a Hellenised Jew from Cyprus, and taken to
Antioch where he preached for a year. From Antioch Barnabas took Paul back to Jerusalem. Here an
agreement was made with the apostles that he should preach to the Gentiles while they would
continue to work only with the Jews. In return Paul agreed that he would collect offerings for the
Jerusalem church. The desire to collect offerings is hard to explain but it can perhaps be seen as
evidence of Pauls wish to keep some form of communication between the two worlds of Christianity,
as they were in the process of becoming. Maintaining some form of relationship with the Jerusalem
Christians was, after all, one of the few ways he could preserve some credibility as an apostle.
Now began Pauls missionary journeys. They were extraordinary in terms of the physical demands
made on him. It is possible to reconstruct the day-to-day walks that the overland routes described in
Acts (if these are accurate) would have required.4 A single days walk of over twenty, or even up to
thirty, miles between cities was often unavoidable and this pace was kept up for days at a time. This
was on unmade roads, some of them mountainous and beset with the dangers of brigands and wild
animals. Paul must often have sought out caravans of traders for protection. Even when a city had
been safely reached, Paul was often greeted at best with distrust and often hostility. There is little
wonder that he has achieved a heroic status among his admirers. Yet, as the analysis of his journeys
below will suggest, his strategy may have been misguided.
The problem lay in the task he set himself. Paul would always face opposition from a variety of
groups. First there were traditional Jews the Jews of the diaspora who were to be found in virtually
every city of the east. They were deeply suspicious of the semi-divine status that Christians appeared
to give to Jesus. For them he was not the Messiah and, in so far as Jesus himself may never have
claimed to be, their stance was understandable. With his message to Gentiles, Paul also threatened to
undermine the relationship between Jews and God-fearers (see p. 17) which was so crucial to the
political and social survival of the Jewish communities. Then there were the Jewish Christians. Some
had been scattered after the stoning of Stephen, others appeared to be undertaking missionary journeys
of their own. Whatever agreement Paul thought he had made in Jerusalem it was hardly likely to be
recognised elsewhere. He would often be in competition with the Jewish Christians for converts but
their direct links to the original disciples would have given them an immense advantage.
Paul did not help himself. He boasts in an emotional outburst to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians
9:1923) that he tries to be all things to all men, a recipe for confusion that can hardly have earned
him any respect. He appears to have had a penchant for being provocative, stirring up unrest and this
would often attract the attention of the city magistrates. It is no wonder that Paul describes how his
travels were filled with imprisonments and beatings at the hands of Jews. As a result his stays in
cities were often curtailed. In the Galatian cities he may have stayed no more than a few days.
This was hardly a strategy that could succeed. Paul claimed to be a Jew but he was extending
Judaism into a new context in which the dominant force was now Christ and his imminent coming.
What this meant for those who gave his movement their allegiance was not clear, perhaps even to
Paul himself. When Paul said that Christ had transcended the Law, he left it unclear how his
Christians should behave without its restraining force. Paul craved acceptance as leader of an
admiring community but, in practice, there were too many obstacles, the fluidity of his own beliefs
and his own inability to establish effective leadership among them. In one of the most revealing
passages in his Second Letter to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 10:10) he records the criticism that
has been made of him that he has no presence and is beneath contempt as a speaker.
 Possibly in around AD 48, Paul is recorded as leaving Antioch in the company of Barnabas. Their
initial stop as they travelled west from the Syrian coast was Cyprus, the home of Barnabas. He, rather
than Paul, was taking the lead in this enterprise. Here they were summoned to the local Roman
governor, the proconsul Sergius Paullus. Acts tells us that Sergius became a believer (after Paul
struck a member of his retinue, a sorcerer, blind a reminder that not all reported Christian
miracles are benign) and it is just at this point that Luke replaces the name Saul by Paul in his
narrative. The success of this meeting was crucial as it won Sergius patronage for Pauls activities, a
patronage that Saul, as he then was, repaid by adopting Sergius cognomen (family name) as his own.
It also explains why Paul and Barnabas ventured into Galatia when they landed from Cyprus. It would
have made more sense to launch their mission in the cities of Pamphylia along the coast of Asia
Minor. Instead, they headed to Pisidian Antioch, the hometown of Sergius family, doubtless because
they carried introductions from Sergius.5
The Galatians were Celts who had migrated to Anatolia in the third century BC and who had
thrown in their lot with the expanding Roman Empire. The vast Roman province of Galatia had been
established in 25 BC. Acts makes it quite clear that Barnabas and Paul only visited cities in the south
Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe, where there were Roman, Jewish and Greek
populations. They concentrated their teaching in the synagogues and on the Gentiles associated with
them. Acts records intense Jewish opposition to their visits and, although it appears that Paul and
Barnabas were able to set up small congregations under elders and visit each city twice, they may
soon have been on their way back to Antioch.
It was in Antioch that the issue festering within the Christian communities broke into an open sore.
It was quite natural for the early Christian leaders (of whom James, the brother of Jesus, was now
dominant), to insist on circumcision for converts but it is likely that, faced with the knife and the
isolation from fellow Gentiles that would follow if they practised Jewish dietary laws, most Gentiles
baulked at conversion. Could the movement expand if it was not prepared to compromise on its
principles? Even Acts, which plays down the conflicts within early Christianity, talks of much
controversy on the matter. Paul and Barnabas set off, as part of a delegation, to Jerusalem and it was
here that James masterminded a plan that allowed Gentiles to convert so long as they refrained from
meat offered in sacrifice and from fornication. The Jerusalem leaders appointed two of their own
representatives, Silas and Judas, to pass the decision on to the community in Antioch. Paul and
Barnabas accompanied them back to Syria.
It may have been soon after this that the visit of Peter to Antioch, which caused so much distress to
Paul, took place. Barnabas joined Peter in submitting to the demands of the Jewish Christians that
they withdraw from eating with Gentiles. We do not know how dependent Paul had become on his
companion but it must have been a major blow. Worse was to come. News now reached Paul that the
Galatian Christians he believed to be his own had been swayed by another gospel, none other than
that of the Jewish Christians. One can hardly criticise them for this. Paul may have convinced some
Galatians but they were probably still uncertain of what they were supposed to be convinced of, so
when missionaries arrived also preaching Christ, but in the different context of Judaism, they must
have been bewildered.
It was a personal crisis that shook Paul to the core. He was incandescent with rage at what had
happened. Whether he wrote his Letter to the Galatians then or later, it is a fitting example of how his
personal emotions, here an intense sense of rejection, drove his theology. There is a single
commandment, Paul tells his recipients: Love your neighbour as yourself, yet his own letter was
certainly not one that showed any love for you stupid Galatians. It begins with a long-winded
justification of his role as apostle, culminating in an extraordinary identification with Christ himself:
I have been crucified with Christ: the life I live now is not my life, but the life which Christ lives in
me (2:20). This was a desperate, perhaps even blasphemous, claim and would have been deeply
offensive to those Christians who had actually known Jesus while he was still alive. Imagine the
shock to real-life witnesses to the crucifixion if they had read or heard this.
Paul was now forced to develop a theological justification for his conviction that Christ had
brought a new era. He goes back to a promise from God that in Abraham all nations shall find
blessing. This, he argues, includes all Gentiles who have faith in Jesus Christ. They are now no
longer subject to the Law, which was a temporary measure until the coming of Christ. He goes further:
if the Galatians continue to observe the Law they will have cut their relationship with Christ; you
will have fallen out of the domain of Gods grace. He goes on to outline the fruits of faith in Christ.
Those who have faith have reached a higher level as a result of having crucified their lower nature
with its base passions, fornication, impurity, idolatry, selfish ambitions, drinking bouts and orgies.
Now (Galatians 6:11) Paul grabs the pen from his scribe and finishes the letter himself. The reason
why the Galatians are required to be circumcised, he claims, is only so that they have some outward
sign of the numbers who have been converted! He ends with emotional blackmail: In future let no
one make trouble for me, for I bear the marks of Jesus branded on my body. How the Galatians
received this letter is unknown. Were they cowed by it, did they ignore it as an emotional rant or did
it simply deepen their confusion over what they were supposed to believe?
When Paul proposed that he should visit the Galatians again, he quarrelled with Barnabas over
their choice of travelling companion and the friendship was finally broken. Instead Silas agreed to go
with Paul. It was a sensible choice: Silas, an appointed representative of the Jerusalem church,
enjoyed an authority Paul did not have and he would have been able to expound the agreement that
had been made over Gentile conversion. So Paul set out again. In Lystra they came across a convert
called Timothy, of mixed Jewish Christian and Gentile parentage whom Paul actually circumcised
out of consideration of the Jews who lived in those parts. It seems a direct contradiction of all he
had told the Galatians but he could perhaps claim that Timothy was Jewish, rather than Gentile, by
blood. It also made sense to enter synagogues, his initial port of call in most cities, only in the
company of other circumcised Jews. Timothy now joined them and was to prove Pauls most loyal
follower.
Clearly things were not easy in Galatia. Paul did not linger and Luke explains that the Spirit
forbade him to go into new areas such as Bithynia. Perhaps Silas, with his contacts with Jerusalem,
felt that this was now Jewish Christian territory into which Paul should not intrude. They proceeded
instead westwards through Asia Minor to reach the coast at Troas from where they took a boat across
to Macedonia. Although Acts reports later visits by Paul to Galatia, there is no archaeological record
of an early Christian community there. It is not until the third century that Christian activity in this area
is attested and even then there is no evidence to link it to the activities of Paul.6
There was always the hope that new journeys would bring success. Silas, Paul and Timothy now
arrived in Philippi, a Roman colony settled in the late first century BC by veterans of the Roman civil
wars. Unlike in most cities of the east, Latin was the dominant language and the city was also distinct
in having no Jewish community. Paul attracted a wealthy dye merchant by the name of Lydia who was
baptised along with other women. Women were certainly easier to convert as the tricky question of
circumcision could be avoided. Lydia welcomed the travellers into her household but the hospitality
did not last long. Paul and Silas were hauled before the magistrates after complaints by the owners of
a slave girl whose lucrative fortune-telling business had been quelled by Paul. They were beaten and
imprisoned for a night before being released when the authorities discovered that they were Roman
citizens. Paul may have found it difficult to advertise his status.
Philippi was on the Via Egnatia, the great Roman road built in 130 BC that ran across northern
Greece. The next major city on the road was Thessalonica, capital of the Roman province of
Macedonia, a thriving port whose position on the main road with access to the Danube basin to the
north had made it the most prosperous city of the region. There was a mixed population of Romans
and Greeks and also a large Jewish community. Once the travellers had arrived Luke records that
Paul spent three successive Sabbaths preaching in the synagogue but here again resentment from the
Jews was Pauls undoing. The Jews simply could not grasp how the risen Christ could be assimilated
into Judaism. Although Luke records that Paul did make some conversions, the Jews hounded the trio
out and then followed them to the neighbouring city of Beroea to interrupt their preaching there. For
some reason the three now became separated and Paul is recorded as having taken a boat southwards
to Athens on his own.
Anyone who had had even rudimentary contact with Greek culture would have known of the aura
of Athens. Plato and Aristotle and a host of other great philosophers, playwrights, historians and
others had debated here. If Pauls own acquaintance with Greek philosophy had been through the
Stoics he would have known that the movement had been founded there and Stoicism was still strong
in the city. Even though the powerhouse of Greek learning, in science and mathematics, was now
Alexandria, Athens retained great prestige and still had influential patrons prepared to shower money
on it.
Yet it was hardly fertile territory for Paul. The sophistication of its philosophers mingled with
their arrogance towards outsiders. Luke records how Paul was exasperated by the mass of statues of
gods he saw idols, of course, to anyone raised as a Jew. Nevertheless, he was treated with some
grudging respect and given a hearing before the Court of the Areopagus. One of the duties of this
ancient court was to oversee new cults being brought into the city and Pauls individual teaching must
have appeared to fall into this category. While in the city he had seen an altar inscribed To the
Unknown God. Ingeniously he argued that this was perhaps the same god that he preached implying
that he was not introducing anything new. Even though his speech as Luke records it is relatively
sophisticated rhetoric, Pauls talk of a man being raised by God from the dead was hardly likely to
convince trained intellectuals and he was widely scoffed at. When Paul denigrates the wisdom of the
wise in his letters, it may have been this humiliating experience that haunted him. He remained an
outsider to the world of the Greek philosophers.
He was far better off in a city where there were marginal groups ready to give allegiance to new
religious movements and he did not have to travel on far to find one. The ancient trading city of
Corinth had long exploited its position on an isthmus as a crossing place for goods and boats wishing
to avoid the tortuous voyage around the Peloponnese. The city had been sacked by the Romans in 146
BC before being reconstituted by Julius Caesar as a Roman colony. It had quickly regained its former
prosperity and its port was one of the busiest in the empire. As a mixing bowl of nationalities and
cultures, it provided Paul with the opportunity for a fresh initiative to make up for the
disappointments he had suffered.
 He was lucky to find a husband-and-wife team, Aquila and Prisca, who were, like him, tent
makers. (This is the first mention of Paul as a tent maker. Even though it seems a rather low status job
for one of such education, it must have provided him with a means of keeping his independence.)
Aquila and Prisca were among those Jews who had been expelled from Rome by Claudius and there
is circumstantial evidence that they might also have been freedmen. It is possible that another
Corinthian Christian, Erastus, who rose to city treasurer, was a freedman.7 In short, their relationship
may have been cemented as much by a shared background as by shared skills. Certainly this was not a
Christian community of high status. Few of you are men of wisdom, by any human standard; few are
powerful or highly born, was Pauls own assessment.
Corinth may have been the first city where Paul had an opportunity to preach over an extended
period. (Acts suggests that he was there for eighteen months.) Timothy and Silas joined him. Again
Paul encountered opposition from the Jews although when members of the community attempted to
arraign him before the proconsul of the province, Gallio, the latter refused to respond. To him the
arguments over Christ were a matter for Jews alone and he was reluctant to get drawn into the
dispute. The down-to-earth Roman governors were well known for being exasperated by the intricate
discussions so loved in the Greek east. Soon after this incident, Acts tells us that Paul, accompanied
by Aquila and Prisca, left Corinth. As is so often the case in this story, one does not know the
background; that the three left together may suggest some kind of division within the Corinthian
community and their expulsion from it.
When Timothy had rejoined Paul in Corinth, he had reported on a visit he had made on his own to
the Thessalonians. Earlier in Acts, Luke suggests that Paul had preached, unsuccessfully, in the
synagogue there, but the converts whom Timothy had encountered do not seem to have been Jews at
all. They are recorded as having turned from the worship of idols; in other words they had been
pagans. They were also artisans and this suggests that Paul was seeking out marginal groups
independent of the synagogues. Not having to worry about offending the Jews, Paul was able to
express his frustrations in his First Letter to the Thessalonians. He tells them that the Jews have killed
Christ and they have obstructed him in his contacts with the Gentiles. Now, he goes on, retribution has
overtaken them. It is possible that Paul is referring to the expulsion of Jews from Rome by the
emperor Claudius of which he will have learned from Aquila and Prisca, but there is also the record
of a massacre of Jews by the Roman authorities in Jerusalem at this time. Pauls being all things to
all people is on display here in his condemnation of his fellow Jews. His hold on his communities
was so fragile that it was an understandable, if distasteful, tactic for one seeking to strengthen his
position against his Jewish adversaries.
Paul, soothed by Timothys message that the Thessalonians had valued his teaching and respected
him, mentions that he has been worried that they too would be seduced from allegiance to him by the
tempter. Reassured by Timothy of their loyalty, his letter is altogether more relaxed in tone than his
impassioned outburst to the Galatians and perhaps reflects that for the first time, in Corinth, he
enjoyed some form of psychological security. There was one major issue to address. The
Thessalonians had taken on board Pauls preaching that the Second Coming of Christ was imminent,
so imminent, in fact, that all would be alive to see it, yet some of the community had already died and
the rest needed reassurance that all would be saved. The Second Coming, Paul tells them, will come
to the unwary like a thief in the night and there will be no escape for those without faith. For believers
such as themselves, on the other hand, night will not fall at all. They will always live in the light as
they are destined by their faith for salvation. Their duty is to keep sober for the occasion. As
elsewhere in Pauls writings, soberness is associated with sexual continence lust is linked to
paganism.
In the letter Paul explains that Satan had thwarted him in his hopes of returning to Thessalonica.
After leaving Corinth, he made passage back to Asia Minor. He landed briefly at Ephesus, left Aquila
and Prisca there, and appears to have gone on to Jerusalem. He may have had money from his
collection to deliver there. He eventually made his way back to Ephesus. This was another of the
empires most successful trading cities. Bequeathed to Rome by King Attalus III of Pergamum in 133
BC, it had become a major provincial centre, a focus for sea routes and the hub of important roads
inland through Asia Minor. It was also the home of the great temple to Artemis to which pilgrims
flocked from throughout the Mediterranean. Again the mix of nationalities and cultures offered
opportunities for conversion. Paul seems to have used his customary tactic of preaching in the
synagogue but again he aroused the opposition of the Jews. This time, however, he withdrew his own
converts to a separate lecture hall and Acts records that he was able to preach safely for two years.
Even now his success offended local interests and a local employer of silversmiths, Demetrius,
stirred up the population against a man who threatened the lucrative trade in votive offerings. Great
is Diana [the Roman equivalent of Artemis] of the Ephesians became the rallying cry of the rioters.
This time the authorities confronted the troublemakers and the city was calmed. However, Paul seems
to have left Ephesus soon afterwards.
The short and attractive Letter to Philemon may have been written while Paul was in Ephesus,
apparently in some form of custody. Philemon was a Christian, living probably in Colossae. His
slave, Onesimus, had escaped and was, for some reason, in the same prison as Paul where Paul
became dependent on him. In the letter Paul tells how he is sending back the slave but he pleads for
Philemon to be compassionate to him. On one level this letter can be seen as evidence of Pauls
desired church in which slave and free will live together as equal. However, Pauls sympathy may
also reflect his own awareness of slavery, freedom from which had given him his status as a Roman
citizen.
It was probably while Paul was at Ephesus that disturbing news arrived from Corinth. The
community with which he had formed his closest links was that of Corinth and Paul felt sensitive
about its loyalty. The fundamental weakness of his strategy had been cruelly exposed. It was one thing
to talk of the passing of the Law and its replacement by faith in Christ but this provided no guidance
in how to confront the everyday challenges of living together until Christ returned. A number of
problems were reported to him. First the community had been fragmented by rival allegiances. Some
had remained loyal to Paul, but others saw Peter as their mentor. There was now a third leader, one
Apollos, an Alexandrian Jew.
Apollos had turned up in Ephesus before Paul had arrived there and Prisca and Aquila had heard
him speak in the synagogue. He was a Christian who knew something of Jesus but Prisca and Aquila
felt that they needed to give him further instruction. They then sent him on to Corinth. They had failed
to foresee the impact he would have. He was clearly learned it has been suggested, in fact, that he
may have been a disciple of the Jewish philosopher Philo. His education would have included
training in rhetoric so, whatever form his Christianity took, he would have been able to expound it
with greater eloquence than Paul (who was to tell the Corinthians that he was himself no speaker). It
is not surprising that Apollos created his own following in the fluid world of the early converts,
especially among those who needed a more intellectually satisfying religion. He may, in fact, have
been the first Christian preacher to bring Platonism into Christianity. Plato had argued for an
intellectual elite who through years of dedicated study were able to transcend the material world with
its desires and ambitions and it seems that it was just this approach that was at the core of Apollos
teaching.
Alongside intellectual divisions there were also reports of social fragmentation. It is not known
how large the Christian community (if one could talk of such a clearly defined group) in Corinth was.
Some reports suggest about forty, others perhaps a hundred. The group would have depended on
wealthier householders to let them meet for their Eucharistic meals. The allocation of rooms within a
Roman house reflected the status of those who entered there, where they would be received and eat,
with more intimate friends welcomed further inside to the more private rooms. The Corinthian
Christians were allocated places at table according to status with some being forced to eat outside the
main dining room. As if this were not enough, Pauls injunction to love one another was reported to
have degenerated into sexual immorality. A man had married his stepmother; another leader appeared
to dress as a woman. It was exactly the kind of behaviour that most disturbed Paul.
Paul had communicated with them before but his First Letter to the Corinthians is the earliest of
these letters to survive. While Paul is upset about what he has heard of their behaviour, he has learned
to be less denigrating of his recipients and more modest. He addresses the Corinthians as a
community who can be brought back into harmony and avoids the bullying tone he had used for the
Galatians. Their disputes should, for example, be resolved within the congregation and they should
shun recourse to the pagan courts. He talks of the importance of the Eucharist as a memorial of Christ
in which all must share equally. In Chapter Twelve, he tells how every kind of skill healing,
prophecy and teaching can be brought together in the service of Christ just as the limbs and organs
contribute to a single body. He was developing a vision of a church as a stable and self-governing
community. It is also in this letter that he tells of his beliefs in the resurrection, the earliest Christian
text to mention it in this context as the spiritual transformation of Jesus after the crucifixion.
There now follows one of his finest bursts of rhetoric: the hymn to charity, charity that transcends
all other gifts. There is perhaps no other passage in his writings that has proved a more enduring
inspiration than this and it has resonated through the centuries. Paul goes on to provide a blueprint for
worship at which hymns, instruction, revelation and even ecstatic outbursts will be welcomed.
However, it is only men who can contribute. Women have no licence to speak and must direct their
concerns to their husbands at home. This stricture may, of course, have been aimed only at the
Corinthian community but Pauls ambivalence towards women is obvious. While the logic of his
theology requires that all male and female, slave and free, Jew and Gentile are welcome in the church
if they purify themselves (1 Corinthians 6:11 (cf. Galatians 3:28)), he also appears fearful of a
breakdown in social distinctions. Here is one of the most ambiguous of his legacies. Within fifty years
male supremacy appears to have reasserted itself in the Christian communities but there remained an
independent tradition in the third century church that Paul had taught that women had the right to teach
and baptise.
At some point after this remarkable letter, Paul visited Corinth again. In his Second Letter to the
Corinthians he describes this as a painful visit. His first letter had failed to produce the community
living in loving harmony that he had hoped for. One individual in particular seems to have led the
opposition to him. Another (lost) letter he wrote to the community had caused great offence. The first
chapters of the Second Letter are deeply troubled and rambling, clearly the work of an individual in
emotional turmoil. Paul seems overwhelmed with the burdens he is carrying and it is only the
promises of Christ that sustain him. The anger with which he condemned the Galatians is replaced by
a pleading tone in which he ask the Corinthians for acceptance of his weakness. This chastened Paul
is understandably more attractive. Normally he was not a man who understood compromise but he
now appears to understand that he must respond to the concerns of the Corinthians rather than impose
his views on them.
However, in a separate letter, which was added later to Chapters One to Nine, Pauls emotional
state is such that he appears close to breakdown. In a tone reminiscent of Galatians, he is back to a
hectoring stance, full of self justification and the denigration of his Christians for being led astray by
others, just, he says, as Eve was seduced by the serpent. His rivals appear to have been Hellenistic
Jews whose charisma depended on rhetoric and miracle working and Paul clearly feels outclassed by
them. He threatens that when he returns to them he will show no mercy and that, somehow, they will
see that he, and not other preachers, speaks through Christ. The air of desperation suggests that Paul
knows he has lost his flock.
When he was on one of his visits to Corinth, Paul wrote his Letter to the Romans. (It is recorded as
having been written at Cenchreae, the port of Corinth.) It is the only one he sent to a community of
which he had no direct experience and, free of the tensions that characterised his letters to
communities whom he knew, it allowed for a more systematic exposition of his theology. Perhaps he
was trying to bring some coherence to his thoughts before he returned to Jerusalem with his collection
and had to justify his views to the Jewish Christian community there. Not surprisingly in view of the
bruises he had suffered at the hands of his opponents and recalcitrant followers, this letter is
preoccupied with the weight of human sin. Everyone is subject to its stifling effect, even Jews who
have observed the Law. Gods proof of his own love for us is shown no longer through the Law but in
the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. God did not withhold his own Son but gave him over for us
(Romans 8:32). Baptism is in the death of Christ and the possibilities of eternal life lie with his
resurrection. The Law is now transcended and history has moved into a new phase in which all
including the Gentiles, of course who show faith may be justified.
No issue in Pauls theology has proved more intractable than understanding what Paul meant by
righteousness and justification through faith. What did it actually mean to set right as the Greek
word Paul used implied? Had the death of Christ, and the freeing of the human race from sin, made
those with faith justified in the sense of being released into spiritual freedom? Did one actually have
to do anything, good works, for instance, to stay in a state of justification or was it a once and for all
gift through the grace of God?
At Romans 6:1519, Paul brings slavery to the core of the argument. Those who have been slaves
to sin can now be redeemed by God through Christ and become slaves of righteousness instead. The
word redeem in Greek is the same term used when a slaves freedom was bought and it is used in
the Old Testament to describe the process by which God freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.
The intensity with which Paul makes his argument is perhaps one instance where he writes from the
heart. The personal experience of his familys freedom from slavery is expressed in his theology.
When, at Romans 8:15, Paul writes, The Spirit [of God] you have received is not a spirit of slavery
leading you back into a life of fear, but a Spirit that makes us sons, enabling us to cry Abba! Father!
; a personal sense of liberation is patent.
The Letter to the Romans was later to be taken up by Augustine and become one of the most
influential documents in western history. Luther went so far as to suggest that this epistle is really the
chief part of the New Testament, and truly the purest gospel, an astonishingly narrow approach to the
totality of the scriptures. However, its impact at the time it was written is completely unknown.
After a stay of perhaps three months in Corinth, Paul returned to Asia Minor. He avoided Ephesus
and headed instead for another major port of the region, Miletus, and it was here that he received a
delegation from the Ephesian Christians. By now he was in a mood of deep foreboding. There is no
evidence that he had ever convinced the Jews of his mission and he must have known that he would
hardly have been welcome in Jerusalem where he probably had a collection to deliver. He did not
expect to return alive from the city and he was pessimistic about the future of his missions. I know
that when I am gone, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. His
depression proved infectious. The Ephesians were in tears when they escorted him to his boat.
Paul had already talked to the Thessalonians of the retaliation being inflicted on Jews. This may
well have referred to the increasing tension in Judaea. When Paul arrived in Jerusalem (c.58) the city
was unsettled. The clumsy tactics of Felix, the procurator, had exacerbated unrest. There had been
massacres and these had fuelled the growing sense of Jewish nationalism which was to erupt in the
disastrous rebellion of 66. The Jewish Christian community, still under the leadership of James, felt
acutely vulnerable and they insisted that Paul went through the ritual of purification to allay the
suspicion that his mission to the Gentiles involved a rejection of his Jewish identity.
This may have satisfied James and his followers but Paul was too well known for him to be left in
peace. Even before the seven days of purification were over Jews from Asia had attacked him in the
synagogue. A rumour that he had offended by bringing a Gentile into the Temple spread round
Jerusalem and caused such turmoil that the centurion in charge of the city garrison intervened to
rescue Paul. Further unrest followed when Paul spoke to the crowds. He was eventually brought
before the Sanhedrin but here again there was confusion when he preached the resurrection of the
dead. The Pharisees in the council supported him, the Sadducees opposed him. Sensibly the
centurion, who now knew Paul was a Roman citizen, arranged for him to be taken down to Caesarea
to be judged by Felix.
Luke provides a series of speeches in which Paul justifies his beliefs before Felix, Felixs
successor, Festus, and Agrippa, a descendant of Herod whom the Romans had installed in a small
kingdom to the north of Judaea. Paul became passionate and overheated but he said nothing that
justified a charge against him. Festus, however, was forced to acquiesce to Pauls demand that he
should be able to appeal direct to the emperor in Rome. In what is one of the best descriptions of a
voyage in the ancient world, Luke describes the tortuous journey across the Mediterranean that
followed. Paul was imprisoned in Rome and may have suffered martyrdom there although some
traditions (a hint in the First Letter of Clement, for instance) suggest that he was released and able to
travel as far west as Spain before returning to Rome to his death, possibly in the persecutions of
Nero. Lukes abrupt conclusion to Acts leaves the question open.
In custody in Rome, Paul seems to have found some kind of emotional peace. It may have been the
support of Christians in the city that calmed him. Perhaps his imprisonment for his beliefs gave him
the respect among them that he craved. He may simply have felt relieved to be away from the tensions
of the Greek east which had done so much to distress him. It was probably now that he wrote the
Letter to the Philippians, the most irenic of his writings.
The community in the Roman colony of Philippi does not seem to have been disturbed by conflict
with traditional Jews. Paul feels confident about its prospects. He assures them that Christ can be
preached in many ways, a much more mature attitude than he had expressed in earlier letters. You
must work out your own [ sic] salvation in fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you,
inspiring both the will and deed, for his own chosen purpose ([Letter to the] Philippians 2:1213).
Christ is now the example of good living. For those who believe in Christ circumcision is spiritual,
not a physical mutilation. He talks too of his own spiritual journey that is not yet complete. Again, as
with the First Letter to the Corinthians, one can warm to Paul in a way which is difficult with his
more intemperate letters. The second part of the letter is somewhat darker in tone: Paul warns of the
dogs who insist on circumcision, for instance, but one is relieved that he ended his life with a sense
of achievement.

Pauls immediate legacy is difficult to assess. It is not known how many of his communities survived
and whether any of them had access to a coherent statement of his theology. Did anyone, except
possibly a few Roman Christians, read the Letter to the Romans, for instance? Only those able to read
Greek would have been able to read them in any case. (Astonishingly, no Latin speaker is known to
have read them in the original until the fifteenth century.) All the major centres of the early church
Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria and Rome were established independently of him. In the fourth
century when churches developed histories of their foundation by an apostle or evangelist (Rome and
Antioch by Peter, Alexandria by Mark), none claimed Paul as their founder. Yet some memory of
Pauls missions persisted. When Clement, bishop of Rome, wrote to the Corinthians in the 90s, it was
to a community that was still squabbling. Clement urged them to reread the letter (only one is
mentioned) sent to them by Paul. Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, writing in about 117 to the
Philippians reminds them that he himself did not have the wisdom of Paul, the man who had taught
them the word of truth and had written them letters (sic) which strengthened their faith.
The Acts of the Apostles must have consolidated Pauls memory. It is not known how and where
copies circulated but it has been argued that it acted as the catalyst for the collection of Pauls
letters.8 By this time, others were writing in his name. The letters to the Ephesians, Colossians,
Hebrews, a second letter to the Thessalonians and letters to Timothy and Titus, which are part of the
New Testament, were all attributed to Paul, a sign that his status was recognised by some followers.
Yet his legacy remained an ambiguous one. What is remarkable is the number of early Christian
writers, the gospel writers and the early church fathers, who do not appear to have been influenced by
Pauls writings at all. They were clearly contentious. In the Second Letter of Peter, written in about
140, the author notes that there are obscure passages in Paul which the ignorant and unstable
misinterpret to their own ruin (2 Peter 3:16). When, very much at the same time, Marcion, the first
great enthusiast for Paul, attempted to create a canon of texts, an early New Testament as it were, of a
single gospel and Pauls letters, the attempt failed. The declaration that Marcion was a heretic (see p.
136) did nothing to boost Pauls position nor did Marcions links to the gnostics whose teachings the
church condemned. It was not until the late fourth century, as a result of the adulation of John
Chrysostom in the Greek-speaking world and Augustine in the Latin, that Paul became fully integrated
into the Christian tradition. Even so, he has inspired radically different Christian responses. Is he the
conservative champion of an austere moral absolutism or the man who urged the breakdown of all
conventional hierarchies? Did he ever resolve the conflict between the revolutionary nature of his
message and his personal abhorrence of social disorder? How far, in practice, did his teachings
create a Gentile Christianity which would never have evolved without them?
Paul shifted the focus from Jesus teachings, of which he said virtually nothing, to the drama of his
crucifixion and resurrection. He demanded an emotional commitment to Christ that required a
rejection of worldly interests, the temptations of the flesh and even the wisdom of the wise. In the
contexts of his belief that the Second Coming was at hand this was understandable. But the Second
Coming did not come and Paul became something completely different. His letters, which had been
received piecemeal by their recipients, were brought together as if they were to define Christian
living for all time. The results were not always healthy. The rejection of the wisdom of the wise
easily led to an assault on reasoned thought. His concerns over sexuality fed into paranoia about the
lures of women and the evils of homosexuality. The stress on sin might be developed into a
denigration of human nature. Pauls own ambivalence towards his Jewish background fuelled anti-
Semitism.
Paul cannot be blamed, of course, for the ways in which his letters were separated from their
original context and used by Christians for other purposes. Tortured as they often are, they stand on
their own as fine literature and impressive examples of ancient rhetoric. At its most passionate, their
eloquence is remarkable. So one can never wish Paul had never happened. The greatest regret must
be that his letters are such isolated survivals. Christianity would have been dramatically different if
we had, for instance, fuller records of Jewish Christianity. There might never have been the
antagonisms between Jew and Christian that were already in place by the second century. We would
have benefited immensely from the survival of some of Apollos speeches (although the Letter to the
Hebrews may reflect some of his ideas.) Apollos may have preached only to an intellectual elite, in
the tradition of Plato, but a more reasoned theology would have provided a useful contrast to the
impassioned and highly emotional rhetoric of Paul.
Paul will always remain controversial and enigmatic. He was heroic in his endeavours but hardly
attractive as a personality. Puritans seldom are. In a comparatively rare moment of insight (2
Corinthians 12:20), he recognised the bitterness and confusion he could bring to those he visited.
Even the loyal Timothy seems to have been rejected for failing to live up to his mentors expectations.
The arrival of his letters must have been dreaded. No one could be quite sure what he would demand
next or what idiosyncratic interpretations he might make of scripture or the message of Christ. They
were, after all, personal to him and not part of an established tradition. For those who were attuned to
the apostles who had actually known Jesus, his authority must have been suspect and his apparent
vision of Christ hardly comparable to their eyewitness testimony. Yet, there have always been
Christians Augustine and Luther are good examples who remain intrigued by Paul even to the
extent of appearing to give his letters precedence over the gospels. They are the theologians who have
given Paul the prominent place in Christian tradition which he occupies today.
 CHAPTER SIX
The Letter to the Hebrews
THE LETTER TO THE HEBREWS IS ONE OF THE MOST FASCINATING documents of the New Testament. The
story of its eventual inclusion in the canon is absorbing in itself. It was known to Clement, bishop of
Rome in the mid 90s and by later Romans such as Justin Martyr in the mid-second century. By 200 it
was being used in Egypt and North Africa under its present title, Letter to the Hebrews (and this is
the title attached to the oldest surviving manuscript). The author was unknown and in the mid-third
century the theologian Origen suggested that only God knew who wrote it. Despite its widespread
use, Hebrews is not to be found in the Muratorian Canon, the earliest surviving list of canonical
texts, of c. 200. It only came to renewed prominence in the fourth century when its theology of an
elevated Christ proved useful to those defending the Nicene cause. It was then given added status by
Jerome and Augustine by being attributed to Paul and so eventually it became an accepted part of the
New Testament.1
For a thousand years after Augustine the weight of his scholarly approval and the natural
conservatism of the church were such that Pauls authorship went unquestioned, but any independent
reader could see that the attribution was false. The author says clearly that his message was attested
to us by those who heard while Paul always claimed direct communication from Christ (Christ lives
in me, Galatians 2:20). The resurrection, a key feature of Pauls theology, is mentioned only once in
passing (Hebrews 13:20). Its major theme of Christ as high priest occurs nowhere in Paul. The Greek
itself is much more sophisticated and polished than Pauls. Martin Luther attributed the letter instead
to the intellectual Apollos and there have been modern scholars who have supported him. Others have
suggested Barnabas or Silas although none of these attributions can be conclusive. Even if Paul was
not the author, the letters concentration on the symbolic importance of Jesus suffering rather than on
any details of his life suggests someone following in Pauls footsteps.
Whatever its source, Hebrews is perhaps the most elegant and coherent exposition of theology in
the New Testament. Only the gospel of John rivals it in sophistication. It may also be quite early. One
of its themes is the way in which Jesus Christ has superseded the traditional priesthood and
sacrificial worship at the Temple. It would be expected that the author would have hammered home
the point by referring to the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in AD 70 if he was writing after
then. There are no more than a few hints that the writer knew of any gospel material or the events of
Jesus life beyond his suffering (there may be two allusions, 6:6 and 13:12, to the crucifixion) so it is
plausible to conclude that Hebrews was a text written later than Paul but earlier than the gospels,
which is why it is discussed here.
The audience of the letter is also unknown but its early presence in Rome and a reference to
greetings to you from our Italian friends (13:24) suggest the city as one possible destination. It might
even have been a follow-up to the same community that had received Pauls Letter to the Romans.
Jerusalem too has been suggested, perhaps to a community of Hellenist Jews who shared the views of
the martyred Stephen. There is the same emphasis on setting the coming of Christ against the Jewish
past that one finds in Stephens speech to the Sanhedrin.
Those who attribute the letter to Apollos assume that Apollos was a pupil of Philo, the most
distinguished Jewish philosopher of his day, in Alexandria and that evidence of Philos thought can be
found in the letter. Philo had been born into a wealthy family in Alexandria in about 20 BC and
probably died in the late 40s AD.2 He was brought up on the Septuagint in the local synagogues but he
was also able to immerse himself in the Greek philosophy of the day. No other Jew of his time was so
learned in the many currents of intellectual thought which derived from Plato, the Stoics and even the
writings of Pythagoras (who was seen as more of a mystic than a mathematician). Philo was
remarkable in that he absorbed this learning without compromising the basic tenets of his faith, the
belief in one supreme creator god, the importance of the Law and the traditional Jewish requirements
of diet and circumcision. In his Commentaries on the Jewish scriptures, Philo applied sophisticated
Greek exegetical methods to the Pentateuch. He knew when to interpret a passage literally and when
to recognise it as an allegory for some deeper spiritual truth. This allowed him to maintain a living
and flexible faith.
The most profound influence on Philo was the fourth century BC Athenian philosopher Plato. Plato
taught that the material world here below is a pale imitation of the more real immaterial one above.
There is a hierarchy of existence surmounted by an overriding divine force, the One. Philo equated
the One, the transcendent entity which stood at the hierarchy of all things material and immaterial,
with the God of Judaism. The prophets, he believed, had already understood this and Plato had
picked up their beliefs and transformed then into his own philosophy. Who is Plato but Moses
speaking Greek? as Philo put it. So, for Philo, Greek philosophy was derived from a Judaism that
contained the true ancient wisdom. Philo developed an elevated concept of God. He is better than
virtue, better than knowledge, better than the Good itself and the Beautiful itself. In fact, he is so far
removed from all earthly existence that there is little a mere human mind can say about him. Philo is
the earliest-known source of the so-called apophatic approach that was to become popular in later
Christian mysticism God is unknowable, unnameable and totally incomprehensible. Even Moses,
said Philo, had grasped little more of God than that he existed. Philo was to prove essential to those
Christian theologians who were faced with the challenge of reconciling the emotional and volatile
conception of God of the Old Testament with the One of Plato.
For Philo, as with Plato, the world of the flesh and the world of the spirit were totally distinct but
God had to find a means of communicating with the material world. Plato had argued that there were
a number of different levels of being between the One and the material world, eternal Forms or
Ideas that existed on an immaterial plane, above the world of material things. One of these Forms
was logos, which Philo considered occupied a vital intermediate position between God and the
material world. Logos is a complex term and the English translation the Word gives little of the
breadth or philosophical depth of the Greek original, which includes the idea of rational thought
itself. However, new meanings of logos were continually being developed. By the time of Philo,
Platonists were using the term to suggest the image or shadow of God while the Stoics saw logos as a
force that acts on the material world. Philo takes this up in his Commentaries: The Logos is an
ambassador and suppliant, neither unbegotten nor begotten as are sensible things. Philo goes on to
describe logos as a commander or pilot but he uses the term so extensively that it often seems to be a
creative force in its own right, akin even to a second form of divinity. In some passages, he refers to
logos as if it were an entity through which human beings could communicate with God.
Although he never knew Jesus, Philo opened the way for the transmission of Jewish and Greek
thought into Christian theology, for which he was revered by later Christians. Magnificent in his
language and broad in his thoughts, lofty and reaching the heavens in his views of the divine
scriptures was the accolade bestowed on him by Eusebius in his History of the Church (2:18). He is
often credited with the ideas behind the opening verses of Johns gospel but there are hints of Philo in
Hebrews that are earlier. So at Hebrews 4:1213, we read: The word [ logos] of God is living,
active, and sharper than any two-edged sword. It can penetrate to divide even soul and spirit, bone
and marrow, and it can discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. The creation is not hidden to it;
everything is naked and exposed to its eyes. This is close to Philos conception of the logos. Again,
in Hebrews there is a sharp distinction between heaven and earth, body and spirit, much in the way
described by Philo. There are moments when we find a material entity, the sanctuary with the Ark of
the Covenant in it (at 8:5) or the Law, for instance, described as a shadow of what is above, again an
echo of Philos Platonism. However, Philo never contemplated a spiritual force so dynamic and
universal in its impact as the Christ of Hebrews so that Apollos, if he was indeed the writer, has
ranged far beyond his mentor. If, however, one assumes a writer who had read Philo, or even studied
with him, perhaps at a superficial level, as Apollos may well have done, then the similarities make
sense.3
Something of the history of the community for which Hebrews was written can be gleaned from the
text. At first it appears to have been made up of Jewish Christians whose beliefs were containable
within Judaism. However, they then ran into trouble. There is talk of their property being confiscated
and their members being thrown into prison, some kind of official reaction to their beliefs (echoes of
a persecution by Nero in Rome?). Now they enjoy a more stable phase but threats remain they are
still abused by their opponents and commitment has fallen off as so often happens in communities that
have reached a second generation. The aim of the writer of Hebrews is to pull the community back
together by reminding them just how radical a change Christ has brought to the world and how dire
the consequences might be if they slid back. Without denigrating their Jewish heritage, the writer
emphasises that Christ has wholly superseded it. The rhetorical style of Hebrews suggests its origins
as a sermon that was later modified into a letter.
Hebrews is a carefully argued text, certainly very different from those more disordered letters of
Paul where emotion often gets the better of the writer. It starts with the assertion that, while in former
times God spoke to humanity in fragments and with a variable message (an interesting perception in
itself), he now speaks though the Son whom He has made heir to the whole universe, and through
whom He created all orders of existence. There are echoes here of the creation of Wisdom in
Proverbs (8:2231) where Wisdom is given an elevated status as the creation of God. The letter
continues with the argument that the Son, having suffered on earth, is now in heaven and higher than
the angels. The message is well put at 2:9: In Jesus we do see one who for a short while was made
lower than the angels, crowned now with glory and honour [i.e. now above the angels] because he
suffered death, so that, by Gods gracious will, in tasting death he should stand for us all. Jesus has
come to earth, been tempted and suffered on behalf of humanity and then, as a result of this suffering,
been elevated to the right hand of God. He provides the focus for the hopes of all his followers. The
letter appears to accept that the kingdom will not come on earth but one will have to enter through a
veil (6:20) to reach Christ in heaven. (This distinction between the two worlds, here separated by a
veil, is typical of Philos terminology.) Hebrews is interesting on the humanity of Jesus. He is equal
to us in all except sin and it is his humanity that allows him to be merciful and compassionate. His
weakness allows him to bear with the ignorant and those who err (5:12). There is no mention of a
Jesus born without sin; the implication is rather that the sinlessness was as a result of his resisting
temptation and of his own suffering.
At 2:17 the idea of Jesus as a high priest is introduced, one which will be developed throughout
the letter. In every way, however, Jesus had superseded the early Jewish leaders, Moses and the high
priest Melchizadek. Melchizadek was a priest who blessed Abraham on his way back from battle and
has been found, in a Qumran text, among the congregation of Gods. He had apparently no father or
mother or ancestry and he was perceived in some way as a priest for all time. Here the author of
Hebrews seems to be drawing directly on Psalm 110 where Melchizadek is referred to in a similar
way. Jesus is the heir to the tradition of Melchizadek. The contrast is made with those priests of the
tribe of Levi who are descended from the first high priest, Aaron. While the latter need to make
continuous sacrifice in the Temple, the Son as the successor of a different line, the eternal
Melchizadek, has made the one sacrifice, his death on earth, which is sufficient to last for ever.
Unlike the earthly high priest, Jesus is in heaven itself and is able to intercede continuously with God
for his people.
The letter then discusses the traditional covenant between God and the Jews. It has proved faulty
(8:7) and, moreover, it is based in an earthly sanctuary, the Temple. A new covenant has come with
Christ and this is beyond the material world. While the sacrifices of bulls and goats, the traditional
offerings at the Temple, can never remove sins, the once-and-for-all sacrifice of Christ can and has
achieved it for those who believe. The blood of Jesus makes us free to enter boldly into the
sanctuary by the new, living way which he has opened for us through the curtain, the way of his flesh
(10:1920). All in the community must join in its meetings and encourage each other in love and
active goodness, all the more so because the Day of Judgement is near. Here the writer becomes less
irenic. Those who wilfully persist in sin after receiving the knowledge of the truth will be consumed
by the fire waiting for all Gods enemies (10:26). At the end of Chapter Ten, the writer reminds the
community of their endurance in days of persecution and urges them to maintain their confidence.
Now comes a meditation on faith. Faith, we are told in a highly influential verse, gives
substance to our hopes, and makes us certain of realities we do not see (11:1). A list follows of the
occasions when faith has been shown by the Jews of old: Abrahams faith that he would find the land
promised him and his heirs; Noahs faith that he would be saved by building the Ark; Sarahs faith
that she would conceive. If these witnesses could show faith even before Jesus had come to earth,
then surely the followers of Jesus, who have experienced his presence among them, should show their
own faith in him.
There follows an exhortation to the community to live lives of moral worth. The community no
longer stands before the fire of Sinai, with the darkness, gloom and whirlwind, but before Mount Zion
and the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem. A few precepts for everyday living are spelled
out, the loving of ones fellow Christians, the giving of hospitality, the honouring of marriage, the
remembrance of those imprisoned, the disregard of material wealth, and obedience to leaders. The
community must accept, however, that it is without a permanent home while on earth. It is outside the
gates, just as Jesus was when he suffered (this may be a hint of the crucifixion but the sacrifices at the
Temple also took place outside the gates so this may be the allusion).
The Letter to the Hebrews is important because it shows how worship of Jesus was developing,
some thirty to forty years after his crucifixion, in communities that appear never to have read any of
the gospels. The letter originates somewhere between the Jewish and Hellenistic worlds; concepts
from the philosophical ideas of each are included. Yet it is one of the earliest documents to provide a
theological justification for the replacement of the Old Covenant by the New. There were many
priests who were mortals and who represent the Old Covenant; Christ, in contrast, is the one high
priest who lives for ever. The mortal priests made their offerings, the sacrifice of animals, on a daily
basis; Christ has made one sacrifice himself. They lived in the material world; he dwells
continually with God in heaven as the representative of the New Covenant. The letter has a
theological sophistication and coherence which is greater than anything to be found in the genuine
letters of Paul. It is a vivid reminder of how mature the Christian communities had become in their
worship even before the writing of any known gospel.
 CHAPTER SEVEN
Fifty Years On
THE GOSPEL WRITERS REFLECT ON JESUS

THE YEARS 66 TO 70 WERE TRAUMATIC ONES FOR THE ROMAN Empire. The emperor Nero had become
increasingly unbalanced and when a revolt broke out against him in Gaul in 68 he panicked and
committed suicide. In the power struggle that followed, three emperors came and went before an
experienced but relatively unknown army officer, Vespasian, commander of the troops in Judaea, now
in revolt against Roman rule, declared himself emperor with the support of the governor of Egypt and
the Balkan legions. In 70 Vespasian set off for Rome, leaving his son Titus in charge of Judaea and it
was Titus who brought the revolt there to a bloody end with a major sack of Jerusalem. The desperate
defenders, some still clinging to the hope that God would intervene to save them, fought back and the
slaughter was immense. Josephus tells of bodies piled around the altar, many consumed in the flames
and others sliding down the steps in rivers of blood. Whatever his original intention, Titus had no
alternative but to describe the sack as the planned culmination of a victorious campaign. His
triumphal arch, the booty from the Temple depicted on its reliefs, still stands in Rome.
The shock waves must have reverberated among the Jewish communities of the empire. In the
splintering of Judaism that followed, the Jewish Christian movement was scapegoated. This was the
moment when the original Jewish core of the Jesus movement began to disintegrate and in this sense
the sack of Jerusalem provides a watershed in the history of Christianity. The communitys position in
Jerusalem had been vulnerable before the revolt its leader James had been stoned to death in 62.
There is a record that in the last years of the 80s Rabbi Gamaliel II introduced the Test Benediction
that excluded Nazarenes and other heretics from the Jewish synagogues. (This may be the expulsion
referred to in John 9:22 but the impact of the Benediction, how far it extended and even its actual
date, is not clear.) While the traditional view that Christians and Jews began to form distinct, even
antagonistic, communities from this period onwards has been challenged, Christians were
consolidating their own memories of Jesus in a form, the gospel, which was to prove so popular that
at least twenty were eventually written.
Forty years on from the crucifixion, the needs of the Christian communities, as they had now
become, were very different. Forty years was a long time in the ancient world because life
expectancy for most was so much shorter. Any preserved evidence of Jesus teachings would have
passed on through more than one generation in this time. The imminence of a Second Coming
appeared to be receding and a more reflective study of the role and status of Jesus was possible.
It is difficult to place the gospels within the literature of the period. In the wider Greek world
there was a well-established tradition of writing history and biography that can be traced back to
Herodotus in the fifth century BC. The Greek historians were preoccupied with the problems of
discussing their sources and providing a narrative whose events were backed by reasoned thought. It
was the historians duty to present an accurate record and show where distortions were likely. The
gospel writers made no such commitment. There is only the odd occasion, the prologue to Lukes
gospel and John 19:35, where the writer speaks of the trustworthiness of an eyewitness, that the
writer comments on his sources. In short, the gospel writers appear to have worked outside the
literary culture of the Greek elite. In his Antiquities (20:2634), Josephus mentions that the training in
Greek poetry and prose, which he put himself through before he began writing his histories, was
virtually unknown in the Jewish culture of his day. This may be to our advantage because a conscious
attempt to follow a literary model is likely to lead to the shaping of the evidence to fit the model. One
only has to note how far later martyrdom accounts and hagiographical lives of saints actually
distorted historical events to make the point. It is perhaps better that the gospel writers worked
outside Greek examples.
The gospels were designed to be read aloud. While it has been estimated that 10 per cent of the
population of the Roman Empire had some literacy, it would probably have been much lower among
the first Christian communities. Transmission of the texts would have been through the readings in the
synagogues, a model which one can assume Christian communities followed. The constant repetition
over years of the Hebrew scriptures would have embedded them in the minds of the listeners so that
Matthew, for instance, would have known that his own audience of Christian Jews would recognise
his references to Isaiah and other texts. It is possible, and the case has certainly been made for Mark,
that the gospel was composed to maximise its dramatic effect.1 The evidence suggests that in the early
church each congregation would have had its own gospel exposure to all four might not have been
typical until at least the end of the second century.
None of the gospel writers felt it necessary to name themselves. The earliest unequivocal linking
of name to gospel is that by Irenaeus in about 185. Irenaeus was anxious to consolidate a single
Christian tradition around a limited number of written texts, among which he selected four of the
surviving gospels. Each of the four was given an author alongside a line from its beginning so that we
know for sure that the gospel Irenaeus attributed to Mark is the same as the gospel we call Mark.
Irenaeus concern was to link the authoritative texts as closely as possible to the apostles themselves
so it is likely that his choice of authors two apostles, Matthew and John, and the companions or
secretaries to two more, Mark (Peter) and Luke (supposedly the companion of Paul) reflect this.
There is no other evidence that securely links any of the gospels to their named writers.
Mark
One can, indeed, take the case of Mark as an example of the problems this leaves. Mark was a
common name in the ancient world and there are Marks referred to in the Acts of the Apostles. One,
John Mark, appears as the son of a Jewish Christian by the name of Mary who was a member of the
Jerusalem community. He travelled to Galatia with Paul and Barnabas but fell out with them and
returned home to Jerusalem. Later Paul refused to have anything more to do with him but a Mark, the
cousin of Barnabas, is mentioned favourably in Colossians (4:10), a letter attributed to Paul but
probably not by him, as a Jewish Christian. Then there is my son Mark referred to in 1 Peter 5:13.
One could make a composite Mark from these references. He was a cousin of Barnabas, a Jewish
Christian who lived in Jerusalem, travelled briefly with Paul, broke with him and then became
closely associated with Pauls rival, Peter. To add to these sources, the second-century writer Papias
(c.12030) recorded a Mark who was secretary to Peter (and so who may have been the same Mark
talked of in 1 Peter 5:13). Papias had heard from an elderly Christian informant that Mark had taken
down Peters sayings but not in order. Peter used to adapt his instructions to the needs of the moment
but not with a view of making an orderly account of the Lords sayings. Papias goes on to suggest
that Marks account is rather lengthy he made it his aim to omit nothing he had heard. This is just
what one might expect from Peter, a man of little education but brimming, of course, with powerful
memories, contributing his reminiscences to a devoted scribe.
However, is the gospel that Irenaeus attributed to Mark the same text as the one Papias refers to?
There are good reasons to think not. Irenaeus Mark wrote in Greek and, as suggested earlier, it is
unlikely that Peter would have spoken Greek well enough to contribute coherent material in the
language. Marks gospel is a tightly organised narrative with an overall theme and important sections
of it list miracles, deeds rather than sayings (in contrast to Q and the Gospel of Thomas, for instance)
an important distinction. Mark does not give precedence to Peter and, in fact, speaks negatively of
him. Would Peter really have passed on the information that Jesus called him Satan? (8:33) And if
Mark had really been so close to Peter would he have repeated the rebuke in his own narrative?
There appears to be nothing other than the name Mark to bring the two documents together. The
tragedy is that Papias document was lost; how much our knowledge of the historical Jesus would
have been enlarged if Peters own reminiscences had survived.
If one turns to the gospel Irenaeus attributed to Mark, presumably in the mistaken belief that he was
linking the gospel directly to Peter, what can one say about its author? He was a Greek speaker but
not a polished writer in the language. There is not a hint that he knows anything about the culture of
the Greek pagan elite. His world seems close to that of the Jewish diaspora where Greek would have
been learned naturally but without the influence of the sophisticated world of the philosophers. His
Jewish heritage is confirmed by his knowledge of the Old Testament but his muddled knowledge of
the geography of Palestine suggests a background outside the area and thus somewhere in the
diaspora. The date of the gospel is usually placed between AD 65 and 75 but there are indications that
the writer knows of the fall of Jerusalem (13:2 where Jesus predicts the Temples destruction) and so
a date soon after 70 seems more likely.
So where might Mark be writing? His audience knows Jewish religious terminology but needs
Aramaic words and Jewish customs explained to them (7:2). They would appear to be a Greek-
speaking community associated with Judaism but not full members of it. Mark also uses some Latin
terms, praetorium (which can mean either the governors palace or the command centre of a
legionary fort), and Latin words for flogging, measures and coins. Bearing in mind that Marks text
circulated and was used by Luke and Matthew, who were probably both based in the east, one might
suggest Syria. The Latinisms support this. There were no legions in Asia Minor or Greece but
between two and four, at different periods, in Syria. The practice was for legions to buy their
provisions from the local community so that Roman coins and measures would have become known
among the native population, as would the word legion, its headquarters, the praetorium, and
doubtless the Latin word for flogging which Mark uses.2
While for centuries Mark has been the most neglected of the gospels, there is now greater
appreciation of its underlying sophistication which, of course, further undermines the argument that it
is a disorganised series of eyewitness memories from Peter. While Mark may not have been highly
educated, he deserves credit for bringing together what he had heard about Jesus baptism by John, a
narrative of a period of teaching and healing followed by the journey to Jerusalem and his Passion
and death into a distinctive form. The highlighting of Jesus baptism and the Passion probably
reflects the importance of baptismal and Eucharistic ceremonies in the Christian communities; their
origins needed to be given special focus. His message is shaped towards his community who appear
to be suffering for their faith and in desperate need of reassurance. Mark presents Jesus as the
supreme example of one who has gone through suffering but who ultimately triumphs. Although the
gospel remains rooted in the very real concerns of first-century Galilee, Mark provides the first, not
always very confident, steps towards defining a universal role for Jesus based on the events of his
life.
 For Mark, Jesus signifies a new phase in world history. From the start Mark treats him as an
exalted figure, no less than the Son of God. This title, as used by Jews, does not suggest divinity, but
rather that he is one uniquely favoured by God. Later Peter recognises Jesus as the Messiah (8:30).
Again, at this stage this does not imply divinity. In fact, Jesus himself distances himself from God.
Why do you call me good? None is good save one, that is God (10:18). Jesus also refers to
himself as Son of Man. Here in Mark is a man who has acquired high status through his close
relationship with God but who is not himself divine. Mark has a conception of Jesus which, while it
exists on the fringes of traditional Judaism, is still acceptable within that world.
In Marks gospel, Jesus is centre stage, a vigorous figure continually on the move. Although Mark
includes passages of Jesus teachings, these are not as prominent as they will be in Matthews gospel.
The emphasis is rather on activity and emotional involvement. Jesus is more human in his responses
than he will be in Matthew and Luke. His status is reinforced by his ability to carry out miraculous
deeds. In the first century, the term miracle meant a wondrous happening, something that would draw
attention to the person who did it. Peter sums it up well in the Acts of the Apostles (2:22): Jesus of
Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs which God did
through him in your midst. (Note how here Peter does not see Jesus as divine but as a man (sic)
through whom God works.) As the New Testament shows, this included healing, of course, and the
exorcism of demons, but also miraculous feedings of the hungry and the conquest of natural laws as
when Jesus walks on water. These are all manifestations of the same power and reflect the high status
that God has given him. However, in many cases, a miracle is linked to the recipient showing faith, as
with the healing of the blind man (10:52), and Mark is doubtless reminding his community of the
rewards arising from trust in Jesus. Again exorcisms represent a direct attack on the devil and they
may be symbolic of a process of purification before the arrival of the kingdom.
Alongside his miraculous deeds is Jesus ability to foretell the future. Again Mark makes a
distinction between Jesus and God. Jesus is indeed able to predict something about his own fate: The
Son of Man will be given up to the chief priests he will be mocked and spat upon, flogged and
killed; and three days afterwards, he will rise again (10:334). In Chapter Thirteen he predicts how
the end of the world will be. However, he then goes on to say that only God actually knows the time
this will take place. Mark carefully positions Jesus as close to God but of a distinctly lower status.
Jesus preaches that one must reject the world in order to follow him but equally one will
experience rejection by ones own native community and relatives. Mark uses the Pharisees and
scribes to swell the opposition to Jesus. The most devastating rejections, Jesus tells his followers,
will be those of the last times when the world begins to disintegrate into warfare and famine and
people will turn on Jesus followers. Families will betray each other, even the father his own child.
The believers must keep faith to the very end.
An important theme of Marks gospel is the distinction between those to whom the secret of the
kingdom of God has been given and those who are distanced from it. Jesus tells his disciples that
everyone can hear his parables but few can understand their meaning. So there have to be
explanations and these are given as, for instance, with the parable of the sower and the seed. Yet
Jesus is continually frustrated by those of his followers who do not understand. When the disciples
complain that there is no bread, he has to remind them of the feeding of the five thousand (8:1421).
Have they not understood that they will be fed if they have faith? They are obtuse in their failure to
recognise the message he is bringing. It is through suffering that one will achieve the kingdom but if
the disciples do not understand this, then Jesus himself must take on the role of the one who suffers.
So 8:31, when he begins to teach them that the Son of Man has to undergo great sufferings, might be
seen as a moment of transition within the gospel. The disciples have shown their inadequacy to take
on the role Jesus had planned for them.
The paradigm now becomes Jesus own rejection, which is presented by Mark in graphic detail.
Having arrived in Jerusalem fully aware of the suffering that awaits him, Jesus begs to be relieved of
the agony. Judas carries out the act of betrayal and there is the abject humiliation of crucifixion, an
experience so profound that Jesus feels that even God has abandoned him. The reader is left haunted
by the mystery of how God can allow his only son to suffer in this way. In the original version of
Mark there seem to be no resurrection appearances; one is simply told that Jesus is risen and has gone
to Galilee. There is not the triumphant ending one will find in Matthew. The survival of Jesus and his
reappearance at the Second Coming are suggested but the reader is left with no clear message.
Perhaps Mark himself, brought up as a traditional Jew, could not conceive of a role for a messiah
who had been so humiliated, the incredible incongruity of a murdered miracle worker, as one
scholar has termed it. At some later date, perhaps only in the second century, another writer added the
experiences of a physical resurrection, possibly to bring Marks gospel into line with the others.
Matthew
Marks gospel was of sufficient importance for it to be circulated. Within fifteen years two other
gospel writers, Matthew and Luke, had drawn heavily on it. Matthew used 80 per cent of Mark but he
felt that he needed to revise and build on the text. Anyone reading the original gospel would never
have known of the virgin birth or the physical resurrection of Jesus and Matthew must have felt that
Jesus deserved a higher status. He had no inhibitions about imposing his own interpretations on the
text he borrowed. By the time his own gospel was complete it was some 50 per cent longer than
Marks. So who was Matthew? A Matthew appears in the gospels and Acts as a tax collector or a
publican and so his recruitment as an apostle (brilliantly captured in Caravaggios Calling of
Matthew in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome) gives him the status required to be attached
by Irenaeus to a specific gospel, even though this gospel was written between AD 80 and 90, long
after Matthew would have died. In any case, it contains no evidence of direct experience of Jesus.
Papias also refers to a gospel by a Matthew but this again is not the gospel we know as Matthew
Papias tells us that his Matthew arranged in order the sayings in the Aramaic language and each one
interpreted [or translated] them as he was able. Irenaeus Matthew, on the other hand, writes in
Greek and his gospel is much more than a list of sayings. The name of the true writer remains
unknown.
Matthews community is much closer to Judaism than Marks. While Mark has to explain Jewish
customs to his congregation, Matthew does not. As will be seen, Matthew works hard to place Jesus
roots in Jewish tradition, yet he expresses bitter resentment of the synagogues, the Pharisees and the
teachers of the law. So his communitys roots are still Jewish but its faith in Christ is powerful
enough to break with synagogue Judaism and experience its opposition. Matthew accords a high status
to Peter and shows continuing respect for the Law. In effect he distances itself from the theology of
Paul. Yet there are Gentiles among the community a call by Jesus to preach to all nations at the end
of the gospel would hardly have been included if there had not been some experience of involvement
in a wider non-Jewish world. Throughout his gospel Matthew hints at conflict conflict with Jews,
other Gentile groups and within the community itself. This suggests a mixed congregation, ensconced
in a niche between the Jewish and Gentile worlds, but very threatened. The gospel is an attempt by
Matthew to use the person and teaching of Jesus to inspire a new focus for the community. It may have
been written in Antioch. The Antioch Christians valued Peter and James and appeared to have
rejected Paul, who had left the city for ever after his confrontation with Peter over eating with the
Gentiles.
Matthew shows a more profound learning of the scriptures than Mark and is altogether more
sophisticated in his language, often polishing up Marks Greek as he rewrites it. He may well have
trained as a scribe. He presents Jesus as of much higher status than Mark does the genealogy he
provides is in itself a symbol of status. He is also much more confident of Jesus role as Messiah. The
word Christ appears twice as frequently in Matthew as it does in Mark. Matthew uses the Greek
word proskynein (to give reverence to) in association with Jesus in contrast to Mark (and Luke)
who hardly ever use it. Matthew deletes any sayings that suggest criticism of Jesus, such as his
rejection of his family or the anger the disciples show when the storm blows up and Jesus appears not
to care. The disciples are also treated with greater respect. In Mark, as we have seen, they often fail
to grasp what Jesus offers. So when Jesus walks on water and quells the storm (Mark 6:52) they are
dumbfounded by the event. In Matthew, on the other hand, they are quick to respond to the same event
with the proclamation: Truly you are the Son of God (14:33). They grasp Jesus status. One of the
most significant changes from Mark is that Matthew portrays Peter as the first of the apostles, no less
than the rock on which the church will be built (16:1718). This verse was to have extraordinary
significance emblazoned in Latin around the inside of Michelangelos great dome of St Peters in
Rome it is the text on which the supremacy of the popes within the Catholic church is founded. While
Marks gospel is dominated by the imminence of the Second Coming, Matthew, writing some years
later when there is still no sign of the Coming, acknowledges that the church must look to its own
survival on earth.
One of the most important concerns of Matthew is to root Jesus more fully within the history of
Israel. Every major facet of Jesus life is therefore placed as the fulfilment of a prophecy from
scripture, in eight cases from the prophet Isaiah. The use of scripture is especially marked in the
infancy narrative (Chapters One and Two) when five different texts are used to support the account of
Jesus birth and childhood. Mark had begun his gospel with Jesus baptism by John but Matthew feels
that something more is required. Mark had asserted no more than that Jesus was the son of Mary
(Mark 6:3). This may reflect a tradition that Jesus was illegitimate, which Matthew felt the need to
refute.
Matthew fills what is a significant void by telling how Mary is with child by the Holy Spirit. This,
Matthew tells us, is to fulfil the prophecy that a virgin will conceive and bring forth a child,
Emmanuel. Matthew is writing in Greek and understandably uses the Septuagint (Greek) version of
Isaiahs verse. While the Hebrew original is almah, simply a young girl, the Greek translation,
parthenos, specifically refers to a virgin. So the Hebrew scriptures provide no support for the idea of
a birth to a virgin; it is found only in the ambiguous Greek translation of them. Matthews main
concern here is probably to establish a link with prophecy rather than to suggest an actual virgin birth
as historical fact. It is impossible to imagine how this unlikely event could ever have been known to
an outsider writing over eighty years after the event.
When Christianity was firmly rooted in the Gentile world Matthews story gained new resonances.
The concept of a god fathering a human mortal was well known and great men were routinely
declared to be the son of a god. Zeus, the father of the gods, impregnated Alexander the Greats
mother Olympia in the guise of a penetrative snake while the philosopher Plato was the reputed son of
Apollo. So Gentile Christians would not have found the concept of a divine paternity strange. It may
well be that Matthew was trying to reassure his Gentile readers that Jesus could hold his own among
the other spiritual figures fighting for their allegiance.
While in Mark the teachings of Jesus tend to be overshadowed by his miracles, Matthew is keen to
highlight his role as an authoritative teacher. Often Jesus refers to other teachings the disciples may
have heard but then distinguishes his own from them. The teachings take up about a third of the gospel
and many are drawn from Q. They are arranged in five separate sessions. Matthew, attuned as ever to
the Hebrew scriptures, may be deliberately echoing the five books of Moses. The first session
(Matthew 5:17:29) is the celebrated Sermon on the Mount that begins with the Beatitudes, offering
blessings for those who are compassionate to others. The Lords Prayer is also part of this episode
and suggests that the Christian community was developing its own prayers to supplant those of the
synagogue. Matthew goes on to emphasise the continuing importance of the Torah. He stresses that
Jesus has not come to abolish the Law but to complete it. Again, and here the contrast with the
teachings of Paul is obvious, Matthew sees Jesus as the fulfilment of the Jewish past, not as ushering
in a complete break with it, although whether Jesus is bringing the Law to an end or simply enhancing
its status by completion is not clear. In the second session of teaching (10:111:1), Jesus
concentrates on the disciples, setting out their own mission. He does not offer them an easy time he
himself has not come to bring peace to the earth, but a sword, and in the upheaval his followers will
be betrayed even by their own families and flogged in the synagogues. They must desert their own
parents to follow Jesus. Matthew is probably preaching to his own community and these passages
suggest their isolation and experience of persecution. The image of Jesus, however, is an unsettling
one. In the first set of teachings, he is preaching gentleness and compassion, in this he brings the
sword.
In the third session (13:153) Jesus is again preaching openly and in parables. Much here comes
from Mark but this time the disciples are able to understand and share the message of his teachings. In
the fourth session (18:119:1) Matthew returns to the concerns of his own congregation. Jesus
stresses compassion for children and the lost sheep. He also requires those who have disputes with
each other to settle them within the community. The distinction is made between the pagan secular
courts and the congregation that acts in judgement on its own affairs. So Matthew does seem to be
referring to an established community which is taking responsibility for its own business. As in the
other sessions, it is the authority of Jesus as teacher that makes the impact and his authority is given
status here by accounts of his miracles that closely follow those in Mark.
Finally, as the Passion nears, Jesus turns his attention to the Last Judgement. He lambasts the
hypocrisy of the lawyers and Pharisees with their fine robes who mislead those who seek the
kingdom of heaven. Here again Jesus highlights the authenticity of his teaching over those who have
betrayed their religion, largely by failing to honour new teachers and prophets when they appear.
Those who are true followers will recognise the signs, elaborated by Matthew with the help of
parables, that will foretell the coming judgement. The decision of final judgement, eternal life or
eternal death, will be made according to the ethical behaviour of the judged, the feeding of the hungry
or the clothing of the naked. In the fourth century this important passage was eclipsed by an insistence
on faith or correct belief as the only means to salvation.
Jesus can do nothing, however, to prevent the Passion and crucifixion, which Matthew, like Mark,
recounts in detail. The Passion narrative is rooted in the hostility of the Jewish leaders who believe
that they are doing the will of God by ridding themselves of Jesus. Yet Matthew presents Jesus as the
one who triumphs. After his account of the resurrection experiences Matthew ends his gospel with the
euphoric message of the risen Christ in Galilee. It makes a fine literary flourish with which to
conclude and Matthew is clearly aiming to provide a clarion call for Christians everywhere. The very
last verse of the gospel, I am with you always until the end of time, suggests that one has now
moved on from the immediacy of a Second Coming. Instead Jesus tells the disciples to go forth to all
nations and to baptise them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is one of
the rare moments in early Christian literature where a Trinity is referred to, although there is no hint
here that the three figures are of equal divinity as would be taught in later centuries.
Luke
The gospel of Luke and its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, were probably written in the 80s.
Irenaeus made the attribution of his gospel to Luke on the basis that Luke is the we companion of
Paul in Acts and had thus established a direct link to an apostle but there is no firm evidence to
sustain this. The best case that can be made for Luke is that no one of that name is mentioned
otherwise in the New Testament and there is no obvious reason for Irenaeus to have attached the name
to the gospel unless there had been some tradition which supported it. This does not get us far.
Equally, as with the other gospel writers, there is no consensus as to where or when the gospel was
written. Luke draws heavily on Mark so he is unlikely to have been writing earlier than 75.
References to Jerusalem surrounded by siege works confirm a date after the destruction of the
Temple. Despite his vivid portrayal of Paul in Acts, Luke shows no knowledge of Pauls letters which
were probably first collected in the 90s. So a date in the 80s seems probable. It remains a mystery
why Luke ends his story in Acts as early as c.62 with Paul still alive in Rome. Perhaps he felt that
Pauls arrival in Rome (there is nothing said of any similar arrival by Peter) symbolises the spread of
the gospel throughout the empire and it was an appropriate moment to stop. The ambition of the
narrative had been achieved.
Luke knows his scriptures well but he is also conversant with Hellenistic culture to a far greater
extent than Mark or Matthew. His values have been seen as middle-class, in that he seems at home
with financial issues, and to understand the humiliation of the professional (the steward at 16:30) who
is dismissed. His middlebrow Greek style is probably typical of that found among the professional
scribes, often slaves or freedmen, who served wealthier households. His dedicatee, Theophilus, who
may have been the leading member of a Christian community, is Greek and the community itself also
seems distant from Judaism. In Acts, as we have seen, Luke makes so much of Pauls ministry that it is
possible that, twenty years after Pauls death, he is writing for a surviving Pauline congregation.
However, Luke reiterates Jesus words that he has not come to supplant the Law (16:17) so even if he
had known Paul he had not absorbed his theology. In short, virtually everything about the background
to this gospel remains shrouded in mystery it is not impossible that it was written for Theophilus
alone, even from within his own household.
Lukes is the longest of the gospels; together with Acts it makes up a quarter of the New Testament.
Some 35 per cent of the gospel draws directly on Mark and another 20 per cent on Q. Perhaps 40 per
cent of the gospel is new material. In his prologue Luke says he knows of other eyewitness sources
and one assumes that he drew on these. However, he was such a self-consciously literary author that
he may well have developed parts of the story himself. He suggests, for instance, in his opening
verses that he is attempting to create an ordered narrative and he certainly did not have inhibitions
about recasting the order of Mark for effect, notably when he places the rejection of Jesus in Nazareth
at the beginning of Jesus ministry (Chapter Four), rather than later. Jesus also chooses his twelve
disciples after his ministry has begun rather than at the start of it as in Mark. Altogether there are
seven occasions when Luke reorders Marks material. Luke follows Matthew rather than Mark in
giving higher status to the disciples, perhaps reflecting a similar rise in status among Christian
leaders of his day, but differs from him in shortening the teaching sessions. The Sermon on the Mount
becomes the Sermon on the Plain. His additions include much of the infancy narrative that is itself
enriched by hymns such as the Magnificat, where Mary glorifies God in gratitude for being chosen to
bear Jesus, and parables such as that of the Good Samaritan and healing miracles not recorded
elsewhere. There is an extended treatment of the Last Supper, possibly because Luke is more aware
of the Hellenistic custom of using a meal as a teaching occasion and this is the model he followed for
his account.
Lukes gospel must be set in its context as the first part of the story of the spread of Christianity. In
fact, it might be said to be the first two parts as Luke begins his narrative with the infancy stories of
Jesus that are placed wholly in a Jewish context. The birth of Jesus is linked to the redemption of
Israel. I have seen with my own eyes the deliverance which thou hast made ready in full view of all
the nations; a light that will be a revelation to the heathen and glory to the people Israel, Simeon
rejoices when Jesus is presented in the Temple (Luke 2:2932). Luke suggests that it is part of the
glory of Israel to provide a saviour whose message will spread to all nations and this theme is, of
course, followed up in the narrative in Acts.
Here we see one of Lukes great strengths, his ability to create a powerful visual impact. No other
gospel writer has had his portrayals, above all the annunciation, the nativity in the stable, with the
visits of the shepherds and the presentation in the Temple, so often and vividly portrayed in art. So
throughout the gospel in stories such as the tax collector Zacchaeus scrambling up a tree in order to
see Jesus (Luke 19:3) or the appearance of Jesus to two travellers on the road to Emmaus, the scene
is memorably set. In the resurrection appearance to the disciples, Luke stresses that Jesus is very
much flesh and bone (contrast Pauls assertion in 1 Corinthians that Jesus is a spiritual body) and able
to eat fish. Jesus is also more firmly rooted in history in Lukes gospel than he is in the other three.
Note for instance the attempt to provide an exact chronological framework in Chapter Three for the
start of Jesus ministry. This does not mean that Luke is historically accurate. His account of why
Jesus was born in Bethlehem is hopelessly muddled and it may have been adapted from an alternative
account he was unable or unwilling to check.3
Lukes gospel is a gospel shaped by movement. After a sojourn in the desert, Jesus returns to his
native Nazareth but is rejected after preaching in the synagogue there. He then initiates his ministry in
the small towns and villages of Galilee. Next (9:51 onwards) he orientates his mission towards
Jerusalem and there follows an account of a measured journey there during which he confirms and
inspires his disciples as bearers of his message. It is the disciples, rather than the local population,
who welcome him to Jerusalem as if he was a king. Luke continually tells his readers how Jesus is
known throughout the region, even at the royal court of Herod Antipas (9:9). Unlike the other gospel
writers, Luke tells of an extended period of teaching by Jesus in the Temple, suggesting that hostility
to his mission was not immediate but took time to gather within Jerusalem. (In fact, the priests, having
determined that Jesus must be removed, may have had to wait until Pontius Pilate, with his power to
order executions, arrived for the Passover before Jesus was arrested.) After the Passion and
crucifixion, which Luke, like Mark and Matthew, places within the Passover feast, Jesus resurrection
appearances are restricted to the city and its immediate environs. It is typical of Lukes own focus on
the city which relates to his belief that Jesus ministry is linked to the redemption of Israel.
Luke always presents Jesus as someone who is subordinate to God the Father. Jesus himself tells
how he has been sent to spread the good news of the kingdom of God (4:43). The same titles that
Matthew and Mark have used for Jesus reappear although Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist,
who is here presented as a kinswoman of Mary, talks of Jesus as my Lord even before he is born.
Luke also brings in a strong role for the Holy Spirit who is with Mary at Jesus conception,
descends on him at his baptism and who, of course, plays a major part in Acts, especially at
Pentecost. The Spirit is therefore associated with the continuity of Jesus presence from his earliest
moment to beyond the ascension. At his conception Jesus is referred to as the Son of the Most High
and a descendant of David. None of this implies divinity and many of the subsequent examples of use
of the title Lord are as a term of respect, as with the leper seeking healing (5:12) or the amazement
of the disciples at the calming of the storm (10:17). Peter recognises Jesus as the Messiah and, in
24:26, Jesus tells his disciples that he, the Messiah, was destined to suffer before entering into his
glory. In other words, the concept of the suffering messiah is already integrated into Lukes narrative.
In comparison to Mark, Luke presents Jesus as altogether more confident of his role as the redeemer
of Israel. He appears to be in command of the events leading to his death. Even in the agony of the
crucifixion there is a sense of fulfilment rather than the abandonment one finds in Mark.
Where Luke differs from Matthew is in placing more emphasis on the human side of Jesus. As we
have seen, Matthew presents a genealogy of Jesus that goes back to Abraham. Luke provides an
alternative genealogy that stretches right back to Adam (3:2338).4 Luke suggests that the link is to
Adam as an individual human being and so roots Jesus within the human race. The infancy narrative
has a warmth to it that is totally lacking in Matthew. This is reiterated by the way that Luke presents
Jesus as a child growing in wisdom (2:52). His compassion is down to earth and extends to those on
the fringes of respectable society. Women play a significant part in the gospel and Luke is the only
gospel to give a positive role to Samaritans, normally regarded as outsiders by orthodox Jews. Jesus
is often shown at prayer, another way in which a more human side, his submission to his Father, is
presented as an example to his disciples, an example that they are to carry on after his death.
The central part of Lukes gospel often becomes little more than a sequence of miracles, parables
and individual teachings to which it is difficult to give any kind of coherence. How does one
reconcile the teaching, in the parable of the servant who does not use his money to accumulate more
and has it confiscated so that the man who has will always be given more (19:22), a godsend text
for Christian capitalists, with, only a few verses before, Sell everything you have and distribute to
the poor and you will have riches in heaven ? In Luke 11:510, the door will always be open to
those who knock on it; in 13:2530, the door will be locked by the master even against those who
have sat at table with him. The Good Samaritan is presented as the ideal, the true neighbour, at one
moment (10:3037), at another (14:25) the crowds are told, If anyone comes to me and does not
hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, even his own life, he cannot be a
disciple of mine. One can make convoluted attempts at reconciliation, as some Christian apologists
do, but one is still left with a confused picture of Jesus ethical requirements. It may be that Luke used
a number of sources of varying reliability but respects them to such an extent that he is not prepared to
rewrite them even when they are clearly contradictory.
Nevertheless one can still discern an apocalyptic message. Jesus positions himself as a prophet
who, like Elijah and Elisha, desires Israels redemption but who is not recognised in his own country.
Those who are not blinded by wealth, an over-confident righteousness, or narrow mindedness will
inherit the kingdom of heaven in the not too distant future. Even though the Jewish leaders reject
Jesus, the Jewish people themselves are not above salvation. In the famous lament over Jerusalem
(Luke 13:345) Jesus tells how he has longed to gather her children under his wings, as a hen gathers
her brood. His longings bear fruit. In the aftermath of the crucifixion, the Jewish crowd refuses to join
in the denigration of Jesus and returns to their homes beating their breasts (23:48). In contrast
Matthew has the Jews taking on the responsibility for the crucifixion: Let his blood be on us and our
children (27:25). It is an important difference of emphasis and it was tragic that Matthews record
was later to be privileged over Lukes in the Christian tradition.
There are enough similarities between these three gospels to deserve the title of synoptic (with
one eye). Mark had established (or had himself followed) a model that, with additions and
developments, his two immediate successors were prepared to follow. Yet it is also extraordinarily
difficult to draw any kind of coherent theology from these gospels. Jesus hovers somewhere in
between heaven and earth, sometimes closer to one than to the other, but always in some form of
special relationship with God. None of the titles conferred on him assumes divinity this would have
been impossible within the Jewish context in which he is presented. It is not always clear whether the
kingdom has already arrived or is yet to come. There remains a tension between his mission as a
universal saviour and as leader of a small specific sect that had distinguished itself by an absolute
commitment to him and the rejection of others. His relationship with the Jews remains ambiguous.
In the AD 80s the gospel writers were still searching to give Jesus mission meaning from the
varied sources and models of those exalted by God which had come down to them. Inevitably their
own beliefs and the needs of their congregations shaped the way they portrayed Jesus and no
historians would expect otherwise in biographies written so long after the death of their subject.
Later this made the gospels very unstable sources for theology there were too many contradictions
that could be drawn on by rival factions in the major debates of the fourth and fifth centuries. The
challenge to use the gospels as sources was made even greater when a fourth gospel that took a very
different form and approach was composed at the end of the first century.
 CHAPTER EIGHT
John and the Jerusalem Christians
THERE IS A POWER AND SOPHISTICATION TO JOHNS GOSPEL THAT immediately place it apart from the
synoptics. While it is undoubtedly a gospel, with the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, miracles, a
passion, crucifixion and resurrection appearances, it draws on very different historical traditions. It
was probably impelled by the history of the community for which it was written and the focus on
Jesus and his mission is intense.1
The origins of John appear to lie close to Jerusalem and in distinctive eyewitness accounts, passed
on perhaps from an early Christian community. The gospel is centred in the city to a much greater
extent than it is in the synoptic gospels in particular, Jesus seems to attend the great Jewish festivals
on a regular basis and to teach in the Temple. John seldom refers to the disciples as Galileans and
Jesus exorcisms, which the synoptic gospels recount as having taken place in Galilee, are not
recorded at all. The existence of some of the villages John mentions in the vicinity of Jerusalem has
been confirmed by archaeological research. The Jerusalem focus is one reason for preferring Johns
narrative of the Passion, as taking place before the Passover proper, to that of the synoptic gospels.
Tradition attributes the gospel to the apostle John, the son of Zebedee, but the majority of scholars can
find no evidence to support this.
However, this early source underwent transmission. It appears that the Christian community that
preserved it was expelled from Jerusalem (John 7:35). John specifically rejects Jerusalem. The
time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem the true
worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth (4:21, 23). There seems to be a strong
possibility that the community broke with the Jewish belief that no human could be divine by
suggesting that Jesus was equal to God. If so this was one of the most crucial moments in history,
unrecorded by the synoptic gospels, as it brought a totally different conception of Jesus, as one fully
divine, into the Christian arena. The split between Judaism and Christianity would be an inevitable
result. The community must have been expelled from Jerusalem. It was able to meet the challenge.
Tradition suggests it moved to Ephesus where one of its preachers transformed the earlier versions of
the gospel into a coherent and reflective narrative. Chapter Twenty-one is usually seen as a final
addition to the gospel. In verses 15 to 17 of this chapter Jesus asks Peter to feed his lambs and this
may reflect the importance of a new pastoral carer in the community. More than any other gospel,
John stresses the relationships of mutual support within the rejected community.
The writing of the final version of John is usually placed between AD 90 and 110, far too late for
an eyewitness to have been directly involved. Overall the gospel has a theological depth that shows
that the new writer was working within an intellectual tradition that is much more sophisticated than
that of the synoptic gospels. The literary tone is also very different, with themes such as light and
darkness and eternal life prominent in a way not found in the others. There is a much greater
emphasis on Jesus as the distinctive and unique Son of the Father, a theme virtually unknown in the
synoptic gospels. John also appears more at home with Greek literary culture than the synoptics. It
has been argued, for instance, that the moving scene where Mary Magdalene recognises Jesus in the
garden draws on Greek literary precedents.
One of the unsolved mysteries of the gospel is the identity of the Beloved Disciple who appears
towards the end of the gospel (13:23). He enjoys a status above that of Peter. At the Last Supper the
disciple is given the closest position to Jesus, and Peter has to approach Jesus through him. It is to
this disciple that Jesus entrusts his mother and he outruns Peter towards the empty tomb, although
Peter enters the tomb first. Traditionally the disciple was believed to be the apostle John himself and
medieval rood screens depicted John and Mary on either side of the cross, John ready to take care of
Mary as Jesus dies. The mystery remains as to why he was not named, although it has been argued that
this anonymity was deliberate in that the disciple symbolised the intimacy that any follower of Jesus
can have with him, one which is even above that enjoyed by Peter. These episodes may also have
been a subtle way of suggesting that Peters primacy in the church was not justified. In addition they
initiate the idea that Jesus had privileged relationships with individual members of the twelve.
Johns gospel begins with the famous prologue that the Word [ logos] was made flesh and dwelt
among us. The opening verses establish the heightened tone of the gospel. The writer assumes that
logos/Jesus is pre-existent alongside God Jesus, in his symbolic form as logos, has already been
created and is now sent among human beings. This pre-existence is an important theological
development in itself. Later, Christians were to identify the logos with Wisdom as in the Old
Testament Proverbs 8:22 where God created Wisdom, which they believed referred to Christ, at the
beginning of time.
Much of Johns theology appears to come from Jewish sources and the discovery of the Dead Sea
Scrolls has strengthened this belief. There are no discernible direct quotations from the Scrolls but
themes such as light and darkness are to be found there and there are similarities in the tone of the
texts. However, John may have found the specific concept of the logos entering the world as an
intermediary in the works of Philo. The idea that the logos is God but also distinct from God is to be
found in both writers. Philos conception of the logos as an ambassador certainly fits with the way
Jesus describes himself in John as one sent.
So Jesus arrives on earth fully formed, as it were. There is no process of maturing into an adult
that one finds in Luke. At 3:13, Jesus talks of his home as being in heaven. The next verses, 3:1617,
are especially significant as a statement of his mission: God so loved the world that he gave his only
Son, that everyone who has faith in him may not die but have eternal life. It was not to judge the world
that God sent his Son into the world, but that through him the world might be saved. As Jesus
reiterates at 6:38, I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who
sent me. An emphasis on saving rather than judging marks a different, more gentle, approach than that
of the more apocalyptic statements of the synoptic gospels. There is no sword here dividing up
families, although there are still hints in the gospel of those who have done wrong rising at the Last
Judgement to hear their doom (5:29). Not all will be saved.
John also makes clear in these verses that Jesus is subordinate to his Father. He has been sent to
earth to do the will of his Father as distinct from his own. Jesus continually talks of his Father as
being greater than he, knowing more, having works of his own which he then reveals to his Son, and
enjoying a higher status as the one who sends. However, later in the gospel (10:30) Jesus is to
proclaim that I and the Father are One, and 5:18 shows the Jews furious with Jesus to the point of
wanting to kill him because he was claiming equality with God blasphemy as far as orthodox Jews
were concerned. These contradictions were to cause great controversy in the theological debates of
the fourth century. The gospel left it unclear whether Jesus was equal to God the Father or subordinate
to him each side could quote verses from the gospel in support of their case. What is certain is that
John gives a far higher degree of divinity to Jesus than the synoptic gospels do and this may reflect
not only the specific beliefs of Johns community but the process by which Jesus was being redefined
and elevated in his divinity by Christians as time passed and the break with traditional Judaism
solidified. Jesus messiahship is also much more closely linked to his divinity than it is in the
synoptics where the title is used with hesitation.
The core of Johns text is organised into a sequence of six signs that portray the status of Jesus.
They are prefaced by Jesus entering the Temple, getting rid of the moneylenders and driving out the
sellers of sacrificial animals. In the synoptic gospels this event (narrated in a different form) takes
place just before the Passion and it is usually argued that John placed it this early for narrative effect.
It also brings the concept of purification to the forefront of the gospel; the Temple must be cleansed
before Jesus teaching can begin. Origen, the great third-century interpreter of the scriptures,
meditated on the reordering and proclaimed the story to be a spiritual truth in an historical falsehood
and this emphasises that the gospel is as much a theological statement as a biography of Jesus.
The six signs of Johns gospel are miracles presented as drama. Here again is a very different
focus from the synoptic gospels. While for Mark there was an endless sequence of miracles as if
Jesus predominant role was as healer, here each miracle is highlighted as an event with a specific
deeper meaning. The first is the famous turning of the water into wine at Cana, the only miracle where
Jesus is shown alongside his mother. Through this miracle Jesus revealed his glory and led his
disciples to believe in him. Soon after the miracle at Cana, in an exchange with a Pharisee named
Nicodemus, Jesus tells how entry to the kingdom of heaven is through water and the spirit. He makes
a powerful distinction between flesh and spirit: Flesh can only give birth to flesh, it is spirit which
gives birth to spirit. This dualism, the separation of a spirit world from the material world of the
flesh, as with light from darkness, is an important feature of the gospel. It may well originate in the
same traditions as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Next Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well and contrasts
the water from the well with that which he can give believers. As so often happens in this gospel, one
element, water, becomes symbolic of something more, eternal life. Other Samaritans are attracted to
Jesus and their recognition of him as the saviour of the world may reflect the expansion of Johns
own community beyond its Jewish origins.
The second sign is the healing of the son of an officer in the royal service, again in Cana. The
third sign follows soon afterwards in the narrative but Jesus is now in Jerusalem where he heals a
sick man who has been lame for thirty-eight years. It is this event that arouses the opposition of the
Jews, who believe that Jesus is claiming equality with God. Jesus responds with a discourse on his
relationship with his Father. The Father loves the Son and shows him his works. However, he cannot
be seen on earth. Jesus can be and the Father expects that he be given equal honour. Yet all is not
well. Jesus complains of the readiness of his Jewish audience to give their allegiance to other leaders
(5:44). There are echoes of Pauls difficulties here, which probably reflect the experiences of every
early Christian group as different leaders struggled for prominence.
The fourth sign is the feeding of the five thousand (Chapter Six). Again Jesus later points to the
symbolic importance of the event. You must work, not for this perishable food, but for the food that
lasts, the food of eternal life my Father gives you the real bread from heaven. Then come the
famous words, I am the bread of life whoever comes to me shall never be hungry. John says very
little about the sacrament of the Eucharist as an institution but he seems to be aware of the symbolic
importance of such a sacrament. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood dwells continually in
me and I dwell in him, confirms the symbolism.
Some kind of crisis was lurking behind these developments as John tells us that from that time on
many of his disciples withdrew and no longer went about with him (6:66 onwards). By now
opposition from the Jews was becoming intense and some were looking for a chance to kill Jesus.
John records the confusion when Jesus returns to Jerusalem and begins preaching in the Temple. No
one can decide whether Jesus is the Messiah, simply a prophet or a troublemaker who has to be dealt
with. This is one of the most revealing parts of the gospel as it reflects what must have been a genuine
debate among the crowds as to who Jesus was. It leads on to the famous confrontation with the Jews
in Chapter Eight. Here the conflict is between traditional authorities as the Jews perceived them,
their God and Abraham as their father, and the very different conception of God as Jesus own
father which Jesus preaches.
The remarkable thing about this confrontation is that if read without Christian preconceptions (in
other words not from the perspective that Jesus must be right), it shows up the dilemmas that anyone
listening to him must have faced. One feels that if one had been there one might have been convinced
by the arguments on either side and it is interesting that John allows this perspective to survive. The
drama is heightened by Jesus use of the words I am, as in In very truth I tell you before Abraham
was born, I am (8:58). I am is similar to expressions that God uses to refer to himself in the
Hebrew scriptures. Its use (and there are two other examples in the confrontation scene, at 8:24 and
8:28) associates Jesus closely with God and the immediate response to the third use of the phrase (at
8:58), when the Jews pick up stones to throw at him, shows how offensive it must have been to them.
Later we are told that anyone who acknowledges Jesus as Messiah has been banned from the
synagogue (9:22). This truly was the fault line between Christian and Jew, the beginnings of distinct,
and often antagonistic, communities.
The narrative continues (Chapter Nine) with the fifth sign, the healing of a man who has been blind
since birth. Jesus disciples, brought up in the Jewish tradition that suffering is decreed by God as a
punishment for sin, ask whether it was the man himself or his parents who were the sinners. Jesus
reply is remarkable, even somewhat discomfiting: He was born blind so that Gods power might be
displayed in curing him. In other words, the world is set up so that Jesus can show his powers.
Another fascinating discussion follows among the Jews as to whether this is a genuine healing at all
and where Jesus power comes from. The healed mans persistence in his faith in Jesus leads to his
own exclusion from the synagogue and Jesus himself uses the healing to make another symbolic point
that he has come to give (spiritual) sight to the sightless.
Then comes the teaching on the good shepherd, one of the most enduring images of Jesus and one
that has persisted at the core of Christian pastoral care (and appears as an important theme in early
Christian art). The good shepherd is contrasted with the hireling who flees from trouble when the
wolf comes. The shepherd Jesus is prepared to stay with the sheep and even lay down his life for
them. He will bring in other sheep so that there will be one flock and one shepherd. When the Jews
then begin forcing him to declare whether he is the Messiah or not, Jesus fails to give a clear answer
but reiterates that if they were members of his flock he would give them eternal life. He goes on to
proclaim (10:30) that he and the Father are one, another statement which leads to the Jews preparing
to stone him. You, a mere man, claim to be a God, they shout. Jesus is forced to retreat across the
Jordan. It is here that he receives news from Mary and Martha, whom he has already encountered in
their village, Bethany, near Jerusalem, that their brother Lazarus is ill, near death. Despite the fears of
his disciples, Jesus decides to return to Judaea but he arrives too late, finding that Lazarus has
already been buried for four days.
The raising of Lazarus from the dead is the sixth of Johns signs. It is prefaced by the famous
words that Jesus speaks to Martha: I am the resurrection and the life. If a man has faith in me, even
though he die, he shall come to life; and no one who is alive and has faith will ever die (11:245).
With the reappearance of Lazarus from the tomb, still swathed in his funerary linen and his face
covered by a cloth, the number of those following Jesus grows further but so does the opposition to
him. Reports of the disorder reach the Sanhedrin and there is increasing concern that the unrest will
bring Roman retaliation. In the debate that follows Caiaphas puts forward the idea that it is better to
kill one man, Jesus, in the hope of calming the tension, than risk the destruction of the whole nation by
the Romans. This approach fits well with the possibility, discussed on p.32, that Caiaphas may have
quietly removed the body of Jesus from the tomb and attempted to send the disciples back to Galilee
without further bloodshed.
The story moves on to the Last Supper, although this is not linked to the Passover feast and there is
no mention of the Eucharist. When Judas leaves the room, no one other than Jesus realises that he is
about to betray him. These little touches of drama are common in John and illustrate the sophistication
of the writing. Jesus preaches his final address to his disciples (from 13:31), presenting them with a
new commandment, that they should love one another as he has loved them. He talks of his return to
his Father, saying that, through knowing him, the disciples already know his Father: I am in the
Father and the Father in me. After he has gone the Father will send another advocate or comforter
(the translation of the Greek parakletos, the original of Paraclete, used only in John), the Spirit of
truth, who will call to mind all that I have told you. John is distinctive in portraying the Spirit as
somehow within Jesus but continuing as a permanent presence when Jesus has returned to the Father.
Johns depiction of the Spirit as so closely linked to Jesus, and Jesus as so closely linked to the
Father was to prove important when the doctrine of the Trinity was defined in the fourth century.
Now Jesus moves on to explore his own relationship with his disciples. His Father is the gardener
and Jesus is the vine which the Father cultivates. The disciples are branches of the vine. The branches
cannot bear fruit without the vine itself giving them life and this is what Jesus is doing. If a branch
breaks off, becomes separated from the vine, it withers and is burned. In this new relationship
between Jesus and his disciples, the disciples are no longer servants but friends who know the mind
of Jesus. In another expression of dualism, Jesus tells them that they are no longer of this world,
because they have been chosen out of this world. After his going, the Spirit of Truth will sustain them.
The end of this moving address comes with a direct prayer to the Father (beginning at Chapter
Seventeen). Jesus has fulfilled his mission on earth and delivered his word to his disciples, thus
transforming them into strangers in the world. Nevertheless he prays that God will not take them from
the world but preserve them from the Evil one. He goes on to petition that all who have faith in him
might be one, just as he and the Father are one. This hope of a unity between God and man is one of
the most powerful messages of the address.
The Passion now begins, Jesus accepts the unfolding of events in a much more serene way here
than, for instance, in Mark. The crucifixion is the medium through which Jesus can return to his
Father, his mission accomplished. The suffering leads on to triumphal glory. His death and the
mutilation of his body by a soldiers lance are both said to be in fulfilment of scripture, a reminder
that John, however much he had broken with traditional Judaism, knew his scriptures. The
resurrection scenes, above all the recognition of Jesus by Mary Magdalene in the garden and the faith
of Thomas when he feels the wounds, are particularly moving. Thomas exclamation, My Lord and
My God, is the only time in all four gospels that the title Lord is directly linked to that of God.
There follows what is probably a later addition to the gospel (Chapter Twenty-one). Jesus appears
on the beach of the Sea of Tiberias where the disciples have returned to their old jobs as fishermen
(in contrast to the story in Lukes gospel and Acts, for instance, where they stay in Jerusalem). At first
they do not recognise him and it is the beloved disciple who eventually grasps that it is Jesus and
tells Peter that it is the Lord. One might think that once again the disciple is being given prominence
over Peter but later Jesus specifically asks Peter to feed my sheep and appears to predict his
martyrdom as an old man. Peter asks what the fate of the beloved disciple will be. No clear answer
is given but the writer (who may have contributed no more than this last chapter) states that he
presents true testimony from the beloved disciple himself.
Johns gospel is surely the most absorbing of the four. It not only creates a theologically complex
portrayal of Jesus as someone much more intimately related to his Father than he is in the synoptic
gospels; it is also a drama. The writer sustains a real sense of doubt among Jesus audience as to who
he is. For those hearing the gospel read aloud for the first time, there must have been much
anticipation as to what would happen next. Even though Jesus all too conveniently disappears or
moves away when the tensions with the Jews become acute, the sense of growing opposition is
handled with skill. Jesus talks in a completely different way than in the synoptic gospels and
references to any form of apocalypse are few. There is no longer the terrible vision of a complete
breakdown of earthly order before the arrival of his kingdom. Believing in him lifts the believer
above flesh into the world of spirit. What happens in the world seems of relatively little concern. In
this gospel more than any other, Jesus authority rests on his distinctiveness from other emissaries of
God in that he alone has actually seen the Father and come down to earth to reveal something of him.
Yet important questions about Jesus remain unresolved. Was he equal to God or subordinate to him?
In what sense did he share in humanity or did he only appear to be human (a view known as docetism
from the Greek dokeo, I appear to be)? How does one explain the discrepancy between the human
and the divine Jesus? Once educated Greek minds set to work on the gospel, it provided immense
scope for debate.
Afterword: Crisis in Johns Community
The history of Christianity is full of those who claim a correct interpretation of Christian texts or a
special relationship with God or Christ which others have been denied. In many such cases the more
apocalyptic verses of the scriptures, those promising destruction on those who are not real
Christians, are used to threaten those whose interpretations of the scriptures differ. Such disagreement
has been endemic in Christianity from its earliest days. Paul is a prime example of a leading Christian
who is violent in his outbursts against fellow Christians who wish to retain a core of Jewish
traditions such as circumcision, or who teach another Jesus. Perhaps the earliest example of an
actual schism is to be found in the three letters attributed to John which were probably written at
much the same time as the gospel or, as some have argued, between the original version of the gospel
ending at Chapter Twenty and its later completion with Chapter Twenty-one.
The writer of First John begins by calling his congregation back to the first of command of Christ:
to discipline themselves to live as Christ lived. Yet there has been a development in that the
community has passed from darkness into light. It walks in the light as Christ himself is in the light (1
John 1:7). (This light versus darkness echoes themes in Johns gospel, of course.) This means
nothing, the writer tells us, unless the community lives in love with one another and distances itself
from the godless world and everything in it. Yet now, and here the letter moves on to its main concern,
the Antichrists have appeared, evidence that the last hour is at hand. These Antichrists were
originally members of the community itself who have now left it but they can be recognised by their
denial of Jesus as the Christ. In contrast the true believers are recognised by their union with God
and Christ. There is a powerful sense in the letter of the loyalists becoming transformed through
belief in Christ so that they are already living on a different plane, above the materialism of the
world.
In Chapter Four the writer shifts his focus to God. We cannot see God but if we love one another,
Gods love will be brought to perfection in us. God is love; he who dwells in love is dwelling in
God, and God in him (1 John 4:16). Jesus must be acknowledged as his Son. Those who recognise
Christ in the flesh are the true believers; those who do not recognise him in this way are the
Antichrists even though they claim to speak through the Spirit. Jesus is to be known through his
coming through water and blood. (This relates to the water and blood flowing from Jesus side on the
cross (John 19:34) and thus provides a reference to his suffering in the flesh.) The Spirit is
witness to this. Belief leads to transcendence: God has given us eternal life and this life is to be
lived in his Son (1 John 5:11). In the short Second Letter of John, the addressee, a Lady chosen by
God, in a community some distance from the writer, is urged in a similar way to obey the
commandment of love. Here again there is a warning against Antichrists who do not acknowledge
Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh who may be heading her way and who must not be allowed into
the communitys households. Instead the community must live according to established traditions. In
another short letter, the Third of John, one Gaius is thanked for offering hospitality to members of
Johns community, presumably while they were on missions. A congregation, led by one Diotrephes,
which refuses to have anything to do with John, is mentioned. John warns Gaius of the baseless
charges that Diotrephes lays against him, John, and complains that he will not receive his friends into
his community.
While these letters are difficult to date, there are enough similar themes between them and Johns
gospel to suggest the continuity of the same congregation, but as one that has now found itself in
trouble. Clearly the writer of these letters was at home with the terminology of the gospel and its
ideas. Yet the focus is somewhat different. It is no longer the Jews who are the threat but those who
have offered an alternative vision of Christ. The writer is clearly deeply hurt by what he perceives as
a betrayal. The emphasis in the letters on love, loving ones brothers and sisters, for instance, may be
a direct reflection of his belief that those who have seceded have broken this commandment.
The letters fail to make it clear what the differences are between the loyalists and the
secessionists. The varied ways in which Christ was being perceived in these decades always meant
that any development of thought, especially if urged by an influential leader, could lead to division
within a community. There was as yet no one way of defining true and false Christianity, however
much the writer of First John would claim that there was. There is, however, the suggestion that the
secessionists do not recognise Christ in the flesh. They may have been docetists, believing that
Jesus only appeared to be a man, but was, in fact, a spiritual being throughout. This was not the only
issue. The secessionists claimed to have received their beliefs directly through the Spirit. In Johns
gospel, Jesus had told his disciples that When he comes who is the Spirit of truth, he will guide you
into all the truth (16:13). So it would be within the tradition of the community to expect direct
revelations of the truth through the Spirit. However, the writer of First John clearly believes that the
revelations received by the secessionists are not those of God! He argues instead for beliefs rooted in
traditional authority, the teachings held from the beginning (First John 1:1).
There is no reason to take a for and against stance on the conflicts described in Johns letters.
Their importance lies in their depiction of the disputes over authority that were to arise throughout the
history of Christianity. Some individuals claim that they have a special revelation from God, Christ or
the Holy Spirit. They have been given an insight which others, perhaps because of their own
sinfulness, are unable to share. Unable to convince their fellow believers, they set themselves up as a
distinct church as this group seems to have done. The primary community is deeply upset, not only
because its own teachings and authority have been challenged but because it is deemed unworthy. It
can plead for respect for its own faith and for a return to the commandment of love but ultimately it
has no way of controlling the secessionists. Bad feeling remains. All this was inevitable in the fluid
world of early Christianity and the same issues re-emerge in Christian communities today. However
deep the study, however perfect the lifestyle, however sincere the reflection, it remained impossible
to say exactly who Jesus was and how he should be worshipped.
 CHAPTER NINE
Creating a New Testament
IN HIS EASTER LETTER OF 367, THE EBULLIENT BISHOP OF ALEXANDRIA, Athanasius, referred to a set of
Christian writings that he regarded as authoritative. He described them as canonised in the sense of
being texts that held the core of Christian belief. There were twenty-seven of them. This was the
earliest reference to the complete New Testament, as we know it today, although less complete lists
are known from the end of the second century onwards, notably in the Muratorian fragment of about
200. In 393, at a provincial council of bishops meeting in Carthage, further approval of this canon
was given. A New Testament was never consolidated in the first decades of the Christian church, it
was a process that took centuries to complete. In fact the very idea that one should close off a
selection of New Testament texts and declare it a canon was a very late one.1
By AD 100 a wide variety of texts was circulating in the Christian communities, some of which
would make it into the New Testament, some of which would not. Copies, on papyrus rolls, or the
parchment codices that were becoming more common, were difficult to come by and would have been
valued by those who owned them. Many communities were isolated so that some texts may never
have travelled beyond their source. No Christians at this time would have had access to all the texts
which were finally included (and some, the Second Letter of Peter, for instance, had not been written
by this date). As we have seen, John, writing in the 90s or even later, shows no knowledge of any of
Pauls letters. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch in the early second century, does not seem to have read the
gospels of either Mark or John. Even at the end of the second century, one commentator, Irenaeus,
noted that congregations relied on only one gospel: Matthew was chosen by the Ebionites, a group of
Jewish Christians, Luke by followers of Marcion, Mark by the docetists and John by the gnostics. In
the early third century the theologian Origen records the large number of gospels available to him in
an important cultural centre like Alexandria, all of which he had read lest we should in any way be
considered ignorant, as he engagingly puts it. While he recognises that the four New Testament
gospels are the only acceptable ones to follow, he remains open-minded and refuses to censor other
texts. The idea of a closed canon is still not recognised.
A hundred years after Origen, Eusebius, writing his History of the Church in the 330s, is in touch
with discussions still going on in his day, three hundred years after the crucifixion, over which texts
can be counted as authoritative. Among the writings attributed to Peter, for instance, Eusebius
acknowledges only the First Letter as genuine. He accepts that the Second Letter of Peter is not by the
apostle but is considered valuable enough to be read. Eusebius rejects an Acts of Peter, the Gospel
of Peter, Peters Preaching and a Revelation. He does not include the Letter of Clement in his
selection, even though he describes it as long and wonderful and read aloud in many churches in
early days, as it is in our own. He also rejects the Epistle of Barnabas and a document of Teachings
of the Apostles. He would prefer also to reject the Revelation of John although he acknowledges
some would like to see it as authoritative, as it eventually became (the Book of Revelation). He refers
to a host of heretical works purporting to come from apostles, gospels by Thomas, Matthias and
several others and Acts of Andrew, John and other apostles. It is in Eusebius that we find the
references to Papias gospels of Mark and Matthew although these do not appear to be the same as
those gospels Irenaeus later attributed to the same authors. So Athanasius list marks the culmination
of a long period of debate.
Athanasius final list was not universally accepted. The Ethiopian church acknowledged all his
twenty-seven texts but their New Testament contained thirty-five books, including the Letter of
Clement from Rome, some apparent writings of Peter delivered to the same Clement, an address by
Christ to the apostles after the resurrection and another text from Rome, The Shepherd of Hermas. In
versions of the New Testament circulating in Syriac, a written form of Aramaic into which many early
Christian texts were translated, the Book of Revelation as well as the letters of James, Peter, Jude and
two of Johns are missing. The letter of Philemon was also not considered canonical by the Syriac
Church but there was a third letter of Paul to the Corinthians which was accepted.2
The remaining New Testament texts all have the name of an apostle or a member of Jesus family
attached to them. This may have been primarily to give them status. It was common in the ancient
world to add texts to great names, so that Pythagoras theorem is unlikely to be by Pythagoras and
many of Hippocrates medical texts are much later than his lifetime. In the New Testament there is a
further cluster of letters attributed to Paul, the Second Letter to the Thessalonians, the Letter to the
Colossians and the Letter to the Ephesians. These were first attributed to Paul by his follower
Marcion in the 130s, but they appear to date from after Pauls death in the 60s.
In Ephesians, for instance, the imminence of the Second Coming has receded and the church is seen
as a widespread congregation of (almost certainly Gentile) believers rather than the merely local
community of Corinthians, Thessalonians, or Philippians of Pauls letters. The congregation appears
to be a stable one in which traditional social structures have reasserted themselves as against the
more radical egalitarian message found in some of Pauls pronouncements. Women must be subject to
their husbands although it is stressed that men must be loving towards their wives. Children must be
obedient to their parents as slaves must obey their earthly master with fear and trembling although,
here again, the master is urged to treat slaves with respect as both slave and free have the same
master in heaven. (There is nothing in the New Testament to challenge the institution of slavery itself
the first known Christian critique of slavery, by Gregory of Nyssa, dates only from the later fourth
century. As the debate over slavery in the nineteenth-century United States showed, the Old Testament
was, in fact, used to defend the practice of slavery.) It has been suggested that the writer is adapting
Pauline concepts notably the importance of unity (one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one
baptism, one God and Father of all (Ephesians 4:46)), the need for the grace, a grace which has to
be given, not achieved through hard work, of God for salvation (2:8), the forgiveness of sins through
the shedding of Christs blood (1:7) into the new context of a settled church. Particularly important
here is a passage which stresses how the barriers between Jew and Gentile have now been broken
down (2:1415) and Jesus has brought an enlarged household of God. The church must be sustained
not only by apostles, prophets and evangelists but by teachers and pastoral leaders as well. This is an
institution preparing for long-term survival. There is a tone of encouragement for its members which
contrasts with the hectoring tone of Pauls more emotional outbursts. A date in the 90s seems likely.
The writer of Ephesians may have drawn on the ideas of the Qumran community for the theology
behind his letter. Although his audience is warned of the shallowness of pagans who have abandoned
themselves to vice (shades of the Letter to the Romans here), he is more concerned with the fight
against cosmic powers, the authorities and potentates of this dark world the superhuman forces of
evil in the heavens (6:12). This is the fight between light and darkness which is also to be found in
Johns gospel (also probably from the 90s) and may come from the same sources. Ephesians
introduces a world of devils, demons and dark forces and these were to haunt the later Christian
imagination.
 The Letter to the Colossians shows a similar concern with cosmic forces. The letter is addressed
to a single community, the apparently Gentile Christians of the small town of Colossae in Phrygia.
The language is much closer to Pauls than that of Ephesians and a large minority of scholars accept it
as genuine. However, here again the community appears more settled than any known in Pauls day.
There is a very similar exhortation to respect traditional social structures women submitting to their
husbands, slaves giving entire obedience to their masters that one finds in Ephesians. Again there is
little reference to the struggle against the Jews or Jewish Christians that was such a preoccupation for
Paul. Not that references to Judaism have vanished; there is talk of a new circumcision, which is not
physical as traditional Judaism required, but spiritual in the form of a rejection of ones lower nature:
fornication, indecency, lust, foul cravings and ruthless greed (Colossians 3:5).
The threats to the Colossian community no longer come from the Jews but from false teachers. It
is not clear who these are they appear to be believers in mystical cults or ascetics who go in for
self-mortification and angel worship and try to enter into some vision of their own (2:18). The
angel worship suggests a cult dealing with cosmic powers. There are hints here too of gnosticism,
notably the belief that a spiritual leader could offer a lifeline from a wicked world in which humans
are trapped. Did you not die with Christ and pass beyond the elemental spirits of the universe? asks
the author of Colossians (2:20). These ideas, despite their echoes in the Qumran writings, are more
typical of the pagan world in which Christianity was now spreading and again suggest a date some
twenty years later than Paul, and so the 80s.
In what might be an earlier hymn incorporated into the text, Colossians presents an exalted Christ:
the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation who exists before everything and all
things are held together in him the head of the body, the church. In baptism the convert becomes
buried in Christ and also raised with him through faith in the power of God who raised him from
the dead (2:12). In an echo of Pauls belief in Galatians that he lives in Christ, the dead are hidden
with Christ in God (3:3). So this, like Hebrews, is another exhortation to surrender all to Christ and
it shows how, even before the gospels were known, Christian communities were developing their
own patterns of worship, focused on Christ.
In the short Second Letter to the Thessalonians, there is a much more clearly defined threat to the
Christians than merely false teachers. The writer talks of an enemy, a man doomed to perdition
who even takes his seat in the temple of God, claiming to be a god himself (2 Thessalonians 2:4). At
the present time his wicked purpose is held by a Restrainer, a figure whose identity is never
revealed by the writer. When the Restrainer withdraws then the full wickedness of the enemy will
be revealed and Christ will return to annihilate him. Anyone who chooses sinfulness will be similarly
destroyed. So the community must stand firm in its traditions, maintain its commitments and work hard
for a living. There are a few echoes here of the concerns of the Thessalonians in the First
(undoubtedly authentic) Letter of Paul to them and it may have been written by someone close to Paul
who knew the letter and who addressed a new situation in which there was an enemy. The emperor
Domitian (8196) declared himself Lord and God and was associated with persecutions of
Christians. However, any persecution at local level would have to be initiated by the local governor
who would often exercise restraint to avoid unrest he could not control. Governors often tried to find
a way of avoiding persecution of Christians and it may be that the provincial governor of Macedonia
(of which Thessalonica was capital) was the Restrainer.
There are three Pastoral letters that claim to be written by Paul to churches in Ephesus (the two to
Timothy) and Crete (the Letter to Titus). Their concerns are very similar, the problems of leadership,
the ethical values governing the everyday behaviour of Christians and the threats from false
teachers. These again suggest a date much later than Paul, probably in the late first or early second
century. There are many indications that they are not by the apostle: the theology of Christ is not
Pauline and Paul would hardly have had to justify his status to his close companion Timothy as he
does in the two Timothy Letters. They may be even later than 100. When Marcion, who will be
treated in full later (p. 134), drew up his list of Pauls writings in about 140, he did not include any of
the three. This has led some scholars to suggest that they were written in about 150, after Marcions
own canon had been rejected by the church in Rome, to boost the confidence of those clinging to
Pauls teachings.3 The use of the apostles name and those of two of his prominent companions was a
deliberate strategy to give them status. This is an attractive theory but perhaps not strong enough to
overthrow the scholarly consensus of a date fifty years earlier.
In comparison to his elevated status in Hebrews, Colossians and Ephesians, Jesus Christ is given a
relatively modest role in these letters. The First Letter of Timothy, for instance, opens with God
described as our Saviour and Jesus Christ as no more than our hope. The Letter to Titus asserts
that God has openly declared himself in the proclamation which was entrusted to me [the writer
claiming to be Paul] by ordinance of God our Saviour. Later in First Timothy we are told: There is
one God, and also one mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus, himself man, who sacrificed
himself to win freedom for all mankind (1 Timothy 2:5). Jesus appears as no more than a man who
has acted as mediator, a status that is hardly higher than that of the Old Testament prophets. Later in
the same letter it is stressed that God alone holds sway in eternal felicity. He is King of Kings,
and Lord of Lords, he alone [ sic] possesses immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light (6:15
16). In the Second Letter to Timothy the grace of God is ours through Jesus Christ who is described
later as risen from the dead, born of Davids line; in other words not of divine conception but
adopted, perhaps at the resurrection. At 2 Timothy 4:1 Jesus is given the specific role of judge of
mankind when the Final Judgement occurs. It may be that the description of Jesus as Saviour and
judge is a deliberate attempt to give him equal status with the Roman emperors who also carried the
title of Saviour and who acted, of course, as supreme judge in the empire.4 In short, this is a Jesus
who is very much subordinate to the supremacy of God, perhaps even fully human. While First
Timothy (1:15) tells us that Jesus came into the world to save sinners, there is no mention of his pre-
existence as one finds in John or the Letter to the Hebrews.
Nor would a conventional Jew have found anything to complain about in the precepts for Christian
living that are spelled out in these three letters. Bishops and deacons must be of good character. The
community must live soberly; family life is respected the first duty of a widow is to her children
and grandchildren. The love of money for its own sake is to be condemned. If we have food and
covering we rest content. However, extreme asceticism is also discouraged: in First Timothy those
who forbid marriage and demand abstinence from certain foods should be rejected, For everything
God created is good. This suggests a community more at ease with the world around it than Paul, for
instance, would have expected. Titus is even asked to remind his congregation to be submissive to the
government and the authorities, which in this case would be the governor of the Roman province
which linked Crete to the North African mainland. So whenever the letter was written, it was at a
time when a Christian community could expect to survive within the empire. The imminent Second
Coming was no longer its major preoccupation and the community was even proclaiming its loyalty to
the empire.
The greatest threat to these communities remains the lure of false teachings. In First Timothy (6:4),
it appears that wrangling over words is particularly divisive. Perhaps there were struggles between
rival preachers or nitpicking over the interpretation of texts. Again in Titus the congregation is
warned to steer clear of foolish speculations, quarrels and controversies over the Law. This implies
that the Laws status was still uncertain in this community. In Second Timothy two individuals,
Hymenaeus and Philetus, are targeted for upsetting peoples faith by teaching that our resurrection
had already taken place, in other words that the community had through its belief in Christ already
moved to a more spiritual plane. In this same letter there is the warning of a final age where money
will come first, there will be no respect for parents from their children and men will put pleasure in
the place of God. (Virtually every generation since the second century appears to believe that this age
has arrived in their own!) These reprobates appear to be succeeding and every Christian will have to
face persecution in the ensuing breakdown of order. In First Timothy Christians are required to build
up the spiritual resources within themselves in order to reject the threats; in Second Timothy they are
urged to rely on the scriptures as these have the power to bring wisdom.
If these three letters had not been attributed to Paul, they would have been unlikely to have been
added to the canon. There is very little of theological sophistication in them and they offer a very
different picture of Christ from the other Pauline texts. Yet they were added to the canon and thus
achieved an elevated status within the Christian tradition (and are frequently used as guides for living
in fundamentalist Christian communities). What is new about them is their stress on the importance of
scripture, an indication in itself that Christians had moved from the first generation of teachers to an
age where authoritative texts were becoming more important. First Timothy sets it out well: Every
inspired scripture has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, or for reformation of manners
and discipline in right living, so that the man who belongs to God may be efficient and equipped for
good work of every kind (3:1617). In the early second century, if this was the date of the letters,
inspired scripture would be the Hebrew scriptures, but with the gathering of texts for a New
Testament important questions arose. Which of the many scriptures in circulation are the inspired
ones and who decides? When a full body of scriptures has been assembled, are they all of equal
status with each other? If so, how are contradictions between texts to be resolved? Who decides
which interpretation of a particular verse is correct? With time, the texts themselves became
corrupted with both copying errors and deliberate improvements to suit the concerns of the copyist.5
As will be seen in later chapters, there is a mass of early Christian texts attributed to the apostles and
those close to Jesus. Most of these never reached the New Testament, of course, and it is not always
clear why some were selected and some not.
There are, for instance, two letters in the New Testament attributed to the apostle Peter. As
Eusebius acknowledged, the Second was not believed to be genuine even in the early church. The
First has more supporters as an authentic text by the apostle but there are strong arguments against
Peters authorship, notably the relatively sophisticated Greek of the writer and, as with the letters
discussed in the last chapter, a congregation which was more institutionalised than would have been
expected in Peters day. It also shows the influence of Paul, which one could hardly expect in a letter
by an apostle who so clearly belonged to the Jewish Christian tradition that Paul had rejected. Again
could Peter have possibly written a letter without some reference to the human Jesus he had spent so
much time alongside not even a mention of seeing him after the resurrection?
However, there could well be a link to Peter. In the first verse of the letter, the audience is
described as exiles of the Diaspora in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia in other
words, much of Asia Minor. In Acts 2:9, Jews from three of these regions, Cappadocia, Pontus and
Asia, are mentioned as being addressed by Peter in Jerusalem. Bearing in mind that Acts also tells us
that the Spirit prevented Paul from entering Bithynia and that his message encountered strong
opposition in Galatia from Jewish Christians (16:7), one can envisage a distinct church with
allegiance to Peter and Jewish Christianity in these areas. So even if Peter himself did not write the
letter, someone close to him in Rome (where tradition suggests that he was martyred) may have done
so to those communities in Asia Minor who still remembered Peter as their inspiration. The letters
requirement that honour be given to the sovereign and submission to authority suggests a time when
the church was not being persecuted by the state, possibly the period between the persecutions of
Nero and Domitian and so between AD 70 and 90. Even so, the community is clearly under pressure
from outsiders and a major aim of the letter is to boost their confidence and proclaim their distinct
identity as, in the famous words of the letter, a royal priesthood.
The term royal priesthood has Old Testament precedents and such precedents pervade First
Peter. Here is a writer whose Christianity is rooted in the Hebrew scriptures. Jesus is the
cornerstone, as scripture foretold. He even reaches back to release, through his suffering, those who
were lost in the Great Flood. He was predestined before the world began and now appears in the
last period of time. On earth he suffered and he carried the sins of mankind to the cross so that we
might cease to live for sin and begin to live for righteousness. As already suggested, there is no hint
of a physical resurrection on earth in fact, the opposite. In the body he was put to death; in the
spirit he was brought to life (1 Peter 3:18). This is close to the Pauline idea of the resurrection as
essentially a spiritual event.
A major theme of the letter is the need to endure the present but also to expect the last days. In the
second part of the letter (starting at 4:12) Peter talks of the coming judgement, the fiery ordeal that
has already begun in Gods own household. The community itself will suffer but their suffering will
be rewarded by a life of eternal glory with Christ. The behaviour expected of the audience while they
wait is conventional: women must accept the authority of husbands, slaves that of their masters. The
community must live in love with one another: love cancels innumerable sins. Above all the
example of Christs suffering must provide an inspiration for enduring their own.
With the Letter of James, the next to be considered, we are back in the world of traditional Jewish
piety. While some see it as an authentic work of James, the brother of Jesus and leader of the Jewish
Christians, written perhaps as early as the 40s, the Greek, as with First Peter, seems too sophisticated
for a Galilean villager. The writer describes himself as no more than a servant of God while James
would surely have made mention of his relationship to his brother, perhaps even referred to his life.
The preference of scholars is for a writer who is aware of the authority and teachings of James but
who is writing much later, perhaps in the 80s and 90s. As will be remembered James was a devout
Jew and the letter is so steeped in Judaism that it may originally have been a Jewish text adapted for
Christian use. There are only two mentions of Christ in the entire letter (would Jesus own brother
really have been so restrained?) at the beginnings of Chapters One and Two, although the writer
clearly knows of sayings of Jesus similar to those found in Q. The letter did not easily find its way
into the New Testament. There is no mention of it at all in the Muratorian canon and both Origen in the
third century and Eusebius in the fourth list it as a disputed text. It was only when leading authorities
such as Athanasius in the east and Augustine in the west championed it in the later fourth century that
it became accepted. The letter was known in Rome from the early second century so the original
audience may have been there, with the writer possibly a follower of James from one of the scattered
Jewish Christian communities of Palestine.
 The letter is primarily one of exhortations. Sources for these include the Old Testament, above all
the Book of Wisdom, which contains similar encouragement to live piously and trust in God and, as
suggested, a collection of Jesus sayings similar to those in Q that can be gleaned by comparing the
text to verses from Matthew. There is no suggestion, however, that James knew the gospel itself. He
was living in an age when enduring oral traditions about Jesus were circulating alongside the texts.
The tone suggests a man who has integrated his reflections on these sayings into a coherent narrative
but whose predominant concern is how to transform them into ethical living.
The community that James addresses is not suffering persecution, but it is facing discrimination
for its beliefs, particularly, we are told, from wealthy oppressors. It desperately needs to renew its
commitment to God. The response urged by James is to reject the values of the world, avoid any kind
of snobbery and boasting and concentrate on good works among the poor. Something more than action
is required; it has to be rooted in deeper spiritual values, especially the wisdom of God, peace-
loving, considerate and open to reason (James 3:17). The renunciation of wealth is valuable in itself
in that those who are poor in material goods are rich in faith. There are specific exhortations for
teachers and James embarks on a meditation on how the human tongue can be an instrument for good
or bad. It can be used to praise God or curse ones fellows. The teacher must use it only for pure
ends.
In this James is urging no more than the recovery of traditional Jewish practice but the famous
verses (2:14 onwards) which proclaim that it is of no use for a man to claim he has faith if this has
not be shown in action, have led many to believe that he was directly challenging Pauls belief that
the grace of God could be earned only though faith. Again at 1:25 James urges his listeners to look
closely into the perfect law, the law that makes us free if they wish to find true happiness. Is James
deliberately targeting followers of Paul over the Law and good works? James intention can
probably never be recovered but, as we have seen, Pauls teachings aroused considerable opposition
among Jewish Christians and James may be echoing this. These were issues over which conflict was
inevitable. Martin Luther, a champion of Paul, was so insistent that good works should not form part
of salvation that he argued that the letter should be excluded from the New Testament altogether.
Two short letters in the New Testament, Second Peter and Jude can be dealt with briefly. Jude is
the earlier of the two, perhaps about 90. The writer claims to be Jude, the brother of James, but there
is no link established to Jesus family and certainly nothing to suggest any independent reminiscences
of Jesus. To modern readers the letter comes across as a rant against intruders who threaten those
whom God has called. Verse after verse lambasts those who have infiltrated the community,
threatened the authority of God and indulged in loose living. They have even invaded the love-
feasts, presumably the Eucharistic celebrations. No one has been able to argue convincingly who
these licentious intruders are or whether they are as destructive as the writer contends or simply the
figment of his heated imagination. Some of the same polemic reappears in the Second Letter of Peter,
the reason why it is dated later than Jude. Second Peter portrays a defensive, institutionalised church
in which faith depends on believed truths, the authority of the apostles and traditions that have
become embedded. It reflects the tensions of the second century as the church struggled to find its own
identity.
Finally we come to the last of the books of the New Testament and the one which had to struggle
the hardest to be accepted, the Book of Revelation. Its very nature has excited controversy from
earliest times. While western Christians were more sympathetic to Revelation, it was widely rejected
as authoritative in the Greek-speaking world. Not a revelation at all, since it is heavily veiled by its
thick curtain of incomprehensibility was the view of the third-century writer Dionysius of
Alexandria. It was only Athanasius championship of the book in the fourth century that earned it its
place in the canon. At the Reformation, many of the Protestant leaders rejected it or gave it low status.
Thomas Jefferson was even harsher: Merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of
explanation than the incoherencies of our own nightly dreams was his opinion.6 The modern view is
more accepting and the biblical scholar Richard Bauckham reminds us that Revelations legacy is
substantial: It is a book that in all centuries has inspired the martyrs, nourished the imagination of
visionaries, artists and hymn writers, resourced prophetic critiques of oppression and corruption in
state and church, sustained hope and resistance in the most hopeless situations.7 Not least, its images
of Jerusalem as a city of gold, its walls studded with precious stones, provided a rationale for
opulent church building in the fourth century, the gold-encrusted marble basilicas being a pale
imitation of the heavenly Jerusalem which would one day descend to earth (Chapter Twenty-one).
While the Book of Revelation sits bizarrely alongside the other New Testament texts, there are
precedents within Jewish literature for The Apocalypse as the book is also called, notably the Book
of Daniel. An apocalypse involves a disclosure of some heavenly truth to a seer. In such visions
the world is invariably seen as evil but God will establish his reign, usually in an extraordinary
apocalyptic visitation. The whole experience is described in extravagant imagery of beasts, dragons
and harlots, with numbers such as seven taking on a quasi-mystical significance (seven acts as a
symbol of wholeness). Much of this can be traced back to Old Testament sources and at one level the
book can be seen as a widening of the scriptures to incorporate the advent of Christ as the instrument
of God in his judgement of an evil world. Serious study of the text of Revelation has always risked
being subverted by the mass of fantasists who relate every event of the contemporary world to one or
other of its predictions and then retire discomfited (or to revise their calculations) when the world
continues on its normal course. It makes more sense to relate its prophecies solely to the age in which
it was written, as undoubtedly the author intended.
The receiver of this vision from Jesus Christ calls himself John and in earliest times it was
assumed that this was none other than John the apostle and evangelist. Some of the symbolisms used
in the Book water providing life, the fertility of the natural world as a symbol of divine life echo
Johns terminology. However, even in the third century, Christian scholars were noting that the styles
were so different that they could not come from the same author. The Greek is not nearly as
sophisticated as that of Johns gospel. The clinching argument is that John of the gospel always writes
of human beings ascending into heaven from a world which is left untouched by cosmic drama while
the John of Revelation talks of Jerusalem coming down to earth as the culmination of terrible
destruction and punishment of evil-doers.
An alternative John, John the Elder, a disciple of Jesus described by Papias, was proposed and
championed by Eusebius but scholars today prefer to attribute the text to an unknown John. He
claimed to be living on the island of Patmos, not far from Ephesus, apparently banished there for his
faith (Revelation 1:9). (It is known to have been an island to which the emperors would send exiles.)
The letter is addressed to seven churches in cities in western Asia Minor including Ephesus itself and
its prosperous neighbour Smyrna (the modern Izmir). Each is given a message about the coming
judgement and encouragement or warnings about how they will fare. Some cities such as Philadelphia
and Smyrna are praised, others, notably Sardis and Laodicea, castigated for their spiritual barrenness.
They are assailed by false prophets and prophetesses, slandered by Jews and prone to street
violence. The retribution of Jesus is at hand; some will be saved and others will be smashed to
pieces as if they are earthenware. The Book is essentially a warning of the dramatic events that will
befall those who compromise with the evils of the world, idolise false gods or offer worship to the
emperor. This was the time when cult worship of Roman emperors was spreading in the Greek cities
of the empire and it must have been a concern of the writer. (Perhaps he was in exile in Patmos
because of his resistance to the imperial cult.)
A door into heaven opens and the Spirit takes John through it. God sits in authority on the throne
with elders around him. On his right hand is a scroll which at first, apparently, no one has the right to
open. It is then announced that a lion of the tribe of Judah is allowed to do so. Next a Lamb with
the marks of slaughter on him appears and is declared by the elders to be worthy of breaking its seal.
The number seven reappears: seven seals are to be broken, seven trumpets are to sound and the
contents of seven bowls to be poured out. Destruction is unleashed upon the earth in the shape of
plague, earthquakes and other disasters while those to be saved will be bathed in the blood of the
Lamb and clothed in white garments. Next a pregnant woman robed with the sun appears with a
dragon waiting to devour her child when it is born. (Here there seem to be classical allusions. Greek
myth told the story of the birth of the sun god Apollo to Leto being attended by a threatening monster,
the Python, which Apollo later slew.) The child (Jesus) is born and sucked up into heaven where a
great battle between Michael and the dragon, who is no less than Satan, breaks out. The forces of
heaven are victorious. The woman too escapes but back on earth Satan wreaks his revenge on those
who remain faithful to Jesus. Satan also delegates his powers to beasts one of which carries the
mystical number 666. The beasts are normally assumed to be Roman emperors. (If one transliterates
the Greek form of Nero Caesar into Hebrew consonants and then replaces each consonant by its
numerical equivalent and adds them together, the total comes to 666.) Then there are dire warnings of
the fall of their capital, Babylon, or Rome. The writer describes how seafarers saw Rome
disintegrating in a great fire. (It is not impossible that this involved memories of the fire of AD 65 that
destroyed a large part of Rome. According to the historian Tacitus, it was as a response to the fire that
Nero launched a persecution of Christians.)
Now the heavens open and a rider on a white horse (Jesus) appears, robed in a garment drenched
in blood. Those who have been martyred or are not compromised by worship of the beast come to
life and reign with Christ for a thousand years until the final judgement. After the thousand years Satan
will reorganise his forces but the old heaven and earth will vanish and a new heaven and earth are to
emerge, the holy city of Jerusalem itself coming down from heaven like a bride adorned for her
husband. John is lucky enough to be shown the city descending. It is built of gold, with each of its
gates made of a single pearl and the foundations of its wall precious stones. This Jerusalem has no
need of a temple because the sovereign Lord and the Lamb have taken its place. Down the middle of
the main street runs the water of the river of life. A tree of life is to be found on either side of the
river, each producing a new crop every month.
This description hardly does justice to the vitality of the language of Revelation. Even though the
text is often incoherent, it benefits from being read through as a whole so as to grasp an overview of
the authors vision. The narrative makes its way through the chaos of the breakdown of order towards
a new society at the end of time. Cosmic forces sway to and fro as the new heaven and earth are
achieved and there is dire punishment for those who offend. The references in the gospels to Jesus
bringing a sword are here acted out as he comes down to smite the nations. It is perhaps this image
that allowed Jesus to be incorporated so easily into the imperial iconography of fourth-century
Christianity where he becomes no less than the leader of the legions (see p. 253). In short,
Revelation has infiltrated itself into the Christian tradition in many different contexts and reinforces
the image of the Old Testament God as essentially punitive to those who offend him but as the
champion of those who do not.
Whatever the forces that brought the final canonical texts of the New Testament together in the
fourth century, they did not achieve a coherent body of teachings that could be used easily by
believers. They were not selected for their compatibility on major issues, such as the nature of Christ.
They show rather the different ways in which Christ was being worshipped in an age when
communities were still trying to find meaning for their beliefs. When the demand for theological
certainty grew in the fourth century onwards, different factions in the debates were drawn to different
texts, some to the synoptic gospels as against the gospel of John, some to Paul as against the gospels.
This was understandable and inevitable. It would prove particularly difficult to define the
relationship between Jesus and God and the degree to which Jesus was divine while on earth and, if
so, how this related to his humanity. Did he swap over from divinity to humanity at will or was he
some kind of composite spiritual/human being at all times? The New Testament certainly provides no
unambiguous answers to any of these questions. What it does provide is evidence of vitality and
diversity within the early Christian world, an important legacy for those trying to understand how the
history of Christianity developed.
 CHAPTER TEN
No Second Coming
THE SEARCH FOR STABILITY

THE EARLY CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES PRESENT A MAJOR CHALLENGE for the historian: the sources are so
limited. However, we may gain insights from modern examples of small independent churches. In
James Aults account of Baptist fundamentalism in the United States, Spirit and Flesh, for instance,
he explores the setting up of a small Baptist community in Worcester, Massachusetts in the 1980s. The
average size of a congregation was about a hundred. The personality of the preacher proved
important, as did the atmosphere of welcome that the community provided, especially as there were
so many rival Christian groups in the town for believers and searchers to choose from. What was
interesting was how the church relied heavily on existing kinship or family groups and Ault suggests
that rather than communities being new expressions of religious commitment, they were reinforcing
traditional social networks. Even though the community claimed to be relying heavily on a literal
interpretation of the Bible, all of whose texts were assumed to be mutually consistent, often specific
texts appear to have been isolated and used in support of traditional values, while others were
ignored.1
These communities tended to develop their own interpretation of Christianity. There was a contrast
between those congregations that relied heavily on the written word of the Bible, avoiding any form
of spontaneous and charismatic involvement, and those for which it was central. Each relied on a
different set of texts of which the other seemed unaware. Some congregations imposed restrictions on
the way women should dress in church, others became fixated on homosexuality as the major sin,
citing the Letter to the Romans as their main source, even though Paul gives a long list of other sins in
the same text. Ault perceptively notes that many communities split when they became of a size where
members felt that they had lost their personal contact with their pastor. Aults study reminds us how
many issues Christians can disagree on, especially when situations arise when a very small
disagreement reflects deeper personal tensions within the group. So when one reads in the New
Testament of false teachers and those who deny Christ in the flesh, there is little to be surprised
about. The so called Didache, The Lords Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations of
about AD 100 speaks of the problems of recognising genuine prophets in a way that would have been
instantly familiar to Aults fundamentalists.
The New Testament texts suggest a variety of communities struggling to define Jesus in a way that
does not conflict with the ultimate authority of God. The definitions vary considerably just as one
would expect when the congregations giving primary focus to the worship of Jesus as the Christ were
so scattered and culturally diverse. They could draw on a layer of memories of Jesus as a historical
figure preaching first in Galilee and then in Jerusalem. By the time he arrived there on his final
journey, expectations of some kind of transformation of society perhaps the coming of Gods
kingdom, perhaps a social revolution that would overthrow the power of the traditional priesthood
were high. The trauma of the crucifixion involved not only the destruction of the hopes of the
disciples but also the gruelling torture of Jesus to death. The transformation of the Jesus movement
into something more permanent in his memory was surely rooted in the maelstrom of emotions that
was the immediate aftermath of the crucifixion, so one could hardly expect it to be straightforward.
Inevitably early explorations of the possibility that Jesus was something other than fully human
used Jewish terminology. The most important was the concept of the Messiah, Christos, although this
title had to be adapted from its normal meaning of one who had come in power, and possibly in a
military context, to save Israel to deal with Jesus apparent defeat on the cross. Paradoxically the
cross itself became a symbol of victory (although not in art, where any representation of Christ on the
cross was taboo for some centuries) and it was now believed to have been actively sought after by
Jesus (or required of him by God) as a means of taking on the sins of the world and so bringing
salvation. This in itself required humankind to be defined essentially in terms of its sinfulness. Paul
was crucial here, both in dwelling on this sinfulness (above all in his Letter to the Romans) but also
in recreating the crucifixion and the vision of a resurrected Christ in terms of cosmic drama. Paul was
also important in defining the resurrection as an essentially spiritual event. Outside the gospels there
is no mention of a physical appearance of Christ on earth; the emphasis is rather on Gods raising him
from the dead, apparently straight into heaven where, as the first fruits, he inaugurates the
possibility of resurrection for all. His later appearances are as visions.
There remained the problem of finding a place for Jesus alongside, or subordinate to, the majesty
of God. The extreme views ranged from those who saw Jesus as essentially human but adopted by
God, in much the same way as the prophets had been, and those who saw him as a pre-existent figure
who lived with God, was sent as an ambassador, the logos, to earth and then returned to sit at the right
hand of God, having fulfilled his role through his suffering. John even hints that he is to be seen as
equal to God the Father, an idea which naturally caused outrage, but which was, though no one could
have predicted it, to triumph in the fourth century in the doctrine of the Trinity. The predominant view
of the canonical texts of the New Testament is that Jesus is quasi-divine but always subordinate to the
Father who sends him to earth from above, or raises him from his human existence.
The first Christian communities, those whose primary allegiance was to Jesus Christ, however
they defined him, endured much in order to survive. They were always on the margins of Judaism and
so vulnerable to attack from conservative Jews. There are also reports of persecution from the Roman
authorities. The historian Tacitus documented Neros targeting of Christians after the great fire in
Rome in 64. He tells how Nero ordered Christians to be crucified, set alight or dressed in the skins of
beasts and set upon by dogs. So brutal and vindictive were these atrocities that they resulted in a
backlash in favour of the Christians. Although it has been hard to discover the extent of any
persecution of Christians under Domitian in the 90s, there are hints in the sources that Christians
suffered misfortunes and setbacks in this period. In Rome, Clement (see below) talks of the sudden
and successive calamitous events which have happened to his congregation in this period. Yet the
biggest threat seems to have been internal the false teachers who are found in almost every
Christian community. Yet what else could one expect? What was truth or falsehood in this fluid
situation when there were bound to be different emphases on the way Jesus was perceived? There
must have been many cases where one individual or faction decided that its interpretation was
superior to others and attempted to impose it. Either schism, as in Johns community, or internal
wrangling would have been the inevitable result.
The Didache (whose author and place of origin are unknown) is an important text in showing how
an early community defined itself. The author, who claims to be directly representing the apostles,
draws heavily on Jewish tradition, especially on the rules for fasting which are similar to those
required of Jews but are to be celebrated on different days of the week to emphasise a distinction
from Judaism. Some of the prayers designated for the Eucharist are based on Jewish ones, yet
Christians are also expected to say the Lords Prayer three times a day. The text may even have been a
manual of instruction for Jews that had been rewritten to meet the needs of Christians. The author
appears to know of Christian traditions similar to those of Matthew (presumably from the same matrix
of ideas that Matthew drew on) but he knows nothing of Paul even though he often expresses hostility
to Jews. So this is an isolated community that is evolving out of Judaism and carefully defining
barriers between itself and its host religion but without any inspiration from Paul.
The gateway into the community is provided through baptism in Jesus, the holy vine of David your
servant, through whom God has made known the news of salvation. Baptism allows the convert
access to the Eucharist. The writer is determined to find a common core of moral values that can bind
the fledgling community together. Included among the sins to avoid are abortion and infanticide and
overall the values are those of traditional Jews. Finding a basis for authority is crucial. The
importance of respect for the priest is stressed, as against the lure of false prophets. An injunction to
give high priority to the unity of the church and to reconciling those groups which are inclined to
schism must reflect the tensions which threatened this otherwise unknown group of believers. There
is a hint that Jews (the hypocrites) are taunting them for believing in a man, Jesus, who was cursed
by the manner of his death.2
By AD 100 more stable communities were emerging. It may have been the very experience of
hostility that helped give them their cohesion. In the very early days this cohesion was boosted by
confident predictions that pagans and all others who rejected Christ would suffer eternal damnation.
The Day of Judgement was proclaimed to be on its way and the transformation that would precede it
could already be sensed by those committed to Christ. The Christians needed to preserve themselves
until this Second Coming took place. Now, some decades on, with no evidence of an imminent
Second Coming, a framework for survival had to be erected. An initiation ceremony, baptism by
water, which in early days seems to have been a once and for all commitment with permanent effect
(unlike the ritual purifications required of Jews in specific circumstances), was in place. There were
formal gatherings, many of them in private houses. Some of these involved listening to the Hebrew
scriptures and the new texts, gospels, letters and stories of the apostles which were circulating, others
included a shared meal, the Eucharist, rooted in memories of the Last Supper. Ignatius, bishop of
Antioch in the early 100s, refers to the Eucharist as the medicine of immortality and an antidote, that
we do not die but live forever [sic] in Jesus Christ. This reiterates Pauls belief that participation in
the Eucharist might lead to a transformation of the physical body into something more spiritual, even
transcendent, before death.
Meanwhile confidence was maintained by definitions of the Christians as a royal priesthood (1
Peter 2:29). Their leaders told them that they walked in the light, in other words had transcended the
material world. There were precedents here, of course, with the Qumran community. The precepts by
which Christians were required to live were, however, conventional ones. Sober living, traditional
family relationships, the maintenance of the social hierarchy, including the ownership of slaves, were
all enjoined. Women were expected to continue in their traditional roles and not to participate openly
in church activities. The Letter to Titus even demands allegiance to the imperial authorities.
One of the most important documents relating to the growing institutionalisation of the church is the
First Letter of Clement, dated perhaps to 96. Clement was later described as bishop of Rome, in fact
among the first of the popes, though it appears that early leadership in the Rome church was collegiate
(the evidence suggests a number of small but distinct congregations) and he may have been only one
of its leaders. The letter is perhaps best known for its reference to the martyrdom of Peter and Paul
(Chapter Five). The letter does not specifically say where the martyrdoms took place but tradition
taught that it had been in Rome and this is why Clement knew of them.
There have been painstaking attempts to assemble the evidence of the early church in Rome. It
appears to have broken with synagogue worship by the 50s, perhaps even after disturbances that
resulted in the expulsion of Christian Jews such as Prisca and Aquila from Rome. By the time Paul
wrote to the Romans, he assumed that most Christians had come from pagan communities but had
preserved knowledge of Jewish traditions within the community. Clement mentions a tradition in the
earliest Roman church of Christians deliberately selling themselves into slavery so as to raise funds
to support their fellow Christians. However, by the time he was writing, fifty years on, there were
wealthier Christians. Clement exhorts them to help the poor while telling the poor that they in their
turn should respect the rich. Hard though it is to reconstruct the early church in Rome, there is
evidence of it here as a community attracting converts from across the classes by 100. There is yet no
further evidence for the existence, let alone primacy, of Peter in the Roman church but, some time
after 160, a modest memorial was built over a grave in a cemetery on the Vatican that was revered as
his resting place. Constantine was to centre the first St Peters directly above it.3
The primary aim of Clements letter was to admonish the Christians of Corinth for the way one
faction, described as worthless, had risen up against their own presbyters (Greek presbyteros, an
elder). Their disruptions, Clement warns them, are even worse than they had been in the days of Paul!
Clement assumes some kind of authority over Corinth, certainly the right to supervise the community
when things go wrong. The letter also refers to an apostolic succession, the idea that the apostles
themselves passed on their authority to a new generation of priests, who would pass on their authority
in turn. So long as the presbyters of Corinth live blameless lives, they deserve the respect of their
contentious flock. The ideal has been betrayed by the squabbling Corinthians (Chapters Forty-two to
Forty-four).
This letter is important evidence of an emerging church hierarchy. Even if the early Christian
communities had been egalitarian, the traditional Jewish division between a priestly elite and the
laity had reasserted itself. By 100 there are the first references to bishops as senior to presbyters and
deacons. The Greek word episkopos originally meant an overseer and so its early use by Paul does
not necessarily imply a bishop in the sense of an authoritative leader of a church community. By the
early 100s, on the other hand, in the letters of Ignatius, the episkopos is treated as an important figure
in his own right: You are clearly obliged to look upon the bishop as the Lord himself, he writes.
Ignatius tells of his efforts to set up one centralised church in Antioch from which baptisms and the
Eucharist could be controlled. He complains that many of the Christian households of the city are
inviting wandering charismatics to carry out their services and are resentful of his efforts at control.
In his letters he expands on the need for the bishop to exhort his congregations to trust in their
baptism, to care for widows and the poor and even to protect their slaves. He has praise for those
who free them (a right which had always existed in Roman law). The bishop should oversee the
finances of the community and approve all marriages. He is the focal point for a unified church
community and a bastion against schism.
At some point (Eusebius specifically dates the event to 107 but it may be later), Ignatius was
arrested by the authorities and transported, probably with other Christians, to Rome. Despite his
captivity he seems to have been allowed to communicate with the churches of the larger cities he
passed through and he pleads with them to respect the authority of their bishops. He encounters all
kinds of dissenting groups Jews who wish to maintain separate churches, others who see the
Hebrew scriptures as having greater authority than more recent Christian texts which are now
circulating, docetists who hope to keep their belief in a Christ who was not of flesh and those who
place insufficient, as Ignatius sees it, emphasis on the Eucharist as the unifying ritual of the church. He
calls on them all to live in unity under their bishop. Yet the issue, which overshadows all as he nears
Rome, is his impending martyrdom. He actively yearns for it and when influential members of the
Roman Christians are urged to be allowed to plead for his release, he refuses to let them deprive him
of his martyrs crown. This desire to die in the cause of Christ and the subsequent veneration of those
who have done so are important features of this new phase in the history of Christianity.
Who were the early members of Christian communities? They appear to have been a diverse
group. Many remained close to Judaism, certainly to its scriptures, even if they had by now rejected
the need for circumcision, ritual diet and sacrifice. Clement uses examples from the Hebrew
scriptures to support his chastising of the Corinthians. He lists all the Jewish prophets who found
favour with God on account of their faithfulness. He recounts how Moses had solved the problem of
dissensions among the priesthood by asking for a sign from God, the blossoming of a rod that showed
that Aaron was the chosen priest. So here are communities still deeply rooted in Judaism. Others may
have been from that elusive group, the so-called God-fearers who lingered on the edge of the Jewish
communities without giving them full commitment. Then there was the wider Gentile community
targeted by Paul. Some of these would have been used to cults involving initiation rites, collegiate
activities including shared meals and belief in a spiritual world that somehow transcended the evils
of the material one and so many features of Christianity might have been familiar to them. Greek was
the language of the church even in Rome. The earliest Christian text in Latin is dated to about 180.
In the western empire, this meant that Christians were distinguished from their fellow pagans by
language as well as belief.
The sparse records of the early Christians suggest that there were adherents from most strata of
society, excepting only the aristocracy and the landless poor. In Pauls letters there is the dyer Lydia
in Philippi and the city treasurer of Corinth, Erastus. Lukes patron, Theophilus, appears to be of high
status while Barnabas, with Paul in attendance, seems to have gained an audience with Sergius
Paullus, governor of Cyprus, without difficulty. Ignatius correspondents in Rome must have been
influential in the community if they were ready to plead with the authorities on his behalf. Other early
leaders were householders able to host the Eucharistic meal in their homes. Yet there is also an
abundance of references in the letters to the artisan class, such as the members of the Thessalonian
church whom Paul addressed. Here James echoes Pauls approach when he castigates the very
wealthy as oppressors ready to haul the poor into court. It is the poor not the rich that have faith, an
ethos that is to be found, of course, in the gospels and in Jewish life. Many of the letters specifically
mention the slaves, if only to command them to maintain their obedience to their masters. Some
comparison can perhaps be made between Christianity and the cult of Mithras, where there were
initiation rituals, shared meals and a similar mix of adherents, both slave and free. If the ferocity with
which Christians later targeted Mithraic shrines is anything to go by, the two may have seen
themselves as rivals for the same audience.
The position of women is more complex. Jesus was clearly open to them, ready to associate even
with those who were considered dissolute by his apostles. Paul claims to give women equality with
men before Christ. Yet, while there is no record of either man being married, one senses a completely
different response to the presence of women. Jesus was adamant in his condemnation of divorce but
he does not seem to have been preoccupied with the temptations of physical contact in the way that
Paul was. Jesus does not withdraw from the crowds and is confident of his authority. He transcends
sexuality. Paul is consumed with fears of his own unworthiness and refers often to the destructive
power of lust. He regards celibacy as preferable to marriage for those who can control their desires
(but marriage for those who cannot, Better to marry than to burn) and this approach becomes
popular. In the Book of Revelation 14:4 the saints following the Lamb of God are all undefiled with
women and Ignatius also recognises celibacy as a higher state of being. This was in conflict with
traditional Jewish views on the importance of marriage and family life. However, Christianity did
provide roles for women that may have been denied them elsewhere. There is the specific injunction
to widows in First Timothy: A widow in the full sense, one who is alone in the world, has all her
hope set on God, and regularly attends the meetings for prayer and worship night and day. But a
widow given over to self-indulgence is as good as dead (1 Timothy 5:5). This circumscribed role
was to lead to the consecrated Christian virgin who was given a respected status within her
community.
It is often said that Jesus initiated a new era in the history of human ethics, revealing the love of
God for humankind through his teachings and sacrifice on the cross. These values were, of course,
deeply rooted in Jewish tradition and it is not easy to distinguish specifically Christian aspects of
them. It is difficult to find historical evidence for Jesus self-sacrifice, although this role may have
been given to him shortly after the crucifixion. The challenge in understanding why Gods love might
be expressed in the appalling torture of his only Son remains formidable. It seems to offend ones
deepest ethical instincts. It is also difficult to reconcile the love of God with his apparent willingness
to confine so many individuals to eternal punishment. Pagan philosophers noted that a god who needs
to persecute can hardly have confidence in his own authority. The notion of a coherent set of Christian
ethics is made more complicated by three distinct traditions, those of the Old Testament, Jesus and
Paul, each with a different emphasis and focus and each with its own inconsistencies. How does one
fit in, for instance, the miracle by which Peter brings about the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira after
they withheld money promised to the apostles (Acts 5:112)?
Is it possible to speak of a Christian identity in this period? Traditionally these early Christian
communities have been portrayed as having a strong sense of mission and purpose. They were, it was
said, already well on their way to defining what would later become the church, making an effective
break with their Jewish roots in the process. Yet most of the texts speak of disputes and divisions and
an ambivalent attitude to Judaism. The more that is known of the diversity of Judaism, the more it is
understood that there could be distinct Christianities that evolved from different Jewish traditions.
The empire itself was so fragmented and any new Christian community would have to adapt to local
pagan conditions to survive. It seems difficult, then, to talk of any form of institutional church at this
date. The picture is rather of many different conceptions of Jesus and ways of worshipping him, some
more rooted in Judaism than others.
P ART TWO : B ECOMING CHRISTIAN
 CHAPTER ELEVEN
Toeholds in a Wider Empire
THE ASTONISHING EXPANSION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE BEGAN IN the fifth and fourth centuries BC with the
absorption of the mountainous terrain of Italy. The challenges of these early campaigns established a
pattern whereby each victory led to the accumulation of plunder and manpower that fuelled the next
conquest. Sicily, the Carthaginian empire of the western Mediterranean, and the whole Greek world
of the east followed. By AD 117, on the death of the emperor Trajan, the entire Mediterranean and
outlying areas such as Britain and Dacia, across the Danube, and the civilisations of ancient Egypt
and the Near East were under Roman control. It was Trajans successor, Hadrian (AD 117138), who
understood that continuous expansion was self-defeating. He consolidated the boundaries of the
empire, reformed the legions as a defensive force and concentrated on his real passion, the culture of
the Greeks. He loved to tour the major cities, scatter his largesse on them and compete with their
intellectuals as an equal.
In his great work on the Mediterranean, Fernand Braudel reminded his readers that the
Mediterranean was not a single sea.1 Rather it was a succession of smaller seas and even within these
there were smaller distinct communities. There was never a coherent Roman Empire or something
describable simply as Christianity. Rather there was a mass of different cultures, patterns of rule
and spiritual movements. The first Christians related Christianity to what they already knew. The
Jewish roots remained the most nutritious. However much the life and death of Jesus seemed to
represent a turning point in human history (and was certainly believed to be so by later Christians),
most of the ways in which Jesus was described were not unique to him but had Jewish precedents. He
was the son of David of the gospels and the chief priest of Hebrews among many other titles.
After AD 100 Christianity had to find its own niches in a very different environment the Greek-
speaking eastern Mediterranean. It used to be argued that Greek culture was stagnant in the second
century AD, especially when compared to the achievements of the classical era of the fifth and fourth
centuries BC. In his The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon suggested that the
name of Poet was almost forgotten; that of Orator usurped by the sophists [philosophers who sold
their knowledge to students, thus, in the eyes of some, debasing themselves]. A cloud of critics, of
compilers, of commentators darkened the face of learning and the decline of genius was soon
followed by the corruption of taste. In the early twentieth century, Christian scholars, notably Adolf
von Harnack, agreed. Philosophy, Harnack argued, had become introspective, religious rituals had
become meaningless and lost their vigour. Christianity, on the other hand, was apparently an active
and attractive spiritual force that filled the void.
This claim of a moribund Greek world has long since been exploded. Archaeological research and
a renewed interest in Greek literature of the period have shown that Greek culture was buzzing,
dynamic and expansionist. Certainly the Greeks had been shattered by the experience of defeat and
humiliation at the hands of the Romans in the second century BC but their conquerors valued Greek
civilisation and by the second century AD confidence in their intellectual superiority had returned. In
fact, it was under Roman rule that Greek culture penetrated more fully into the civilisations of the
eastern Mediterranean than it had ever done in the aftermath of the conquests of Alexander.
Far from intellectual life being moribund, some of the finest Greek minds were at work in these
years. The Alexandrian scholar Ptolemy compiled the most sophisticated Greek work on astronomy,
the Almagest (from its Arabic title the Greatest) in the AD 130s. Ptolemy also made an immense
contribution to the discipline of geography, especially in devising means of establishing coordinates
and mapping a globe on a flat surface. In medicine, Galen was recognised as both an outstanding
logician and a dedicated observer of the human body, establishing the paths of nerves and the
functions of arteries. Plutarch of Chaeronea (c.AD 50120) is credited with some two hundred works
of moral philosophy, history and commentary (they were still regarded as classics two hundred years
later but most have since been lost). His twinned lives of prominent Greeks and Romans showed that,
despite tensions between the two dominant cultures of the empire, there were ways in which they
could find accommodations. It was the quintessentially Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius who
composed his Stoic Meditations in Greek. The pagan Plotinus (AD 204/5270) possessed what was
probably the finest spiritual mind of the early Christian centuries. These figures were part of a rich
intellectual world in which a knowledge of Homer and the Greek tragedians, the works of the great
philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle and an understanding of the challenges of scientific and
mathematical knowledge were expected of any well-trained mind.
One reason for the ease with which the Greeks were able to penetrate further east was that Roman
rule was comparatively restrained. Provincial governors normally held their posts for only two to
three years and in the more settled provinces their staffs were small. It was the local elites who were
expected to keep order, as we have already seen in the case of Judaea where the high priest presided.
This was a collaborationist empire, elites and the Roman governing class each recognising the
importance to the other of maintaining status. Greek cities flourished, new ones were founded and the
elites absorbed Greek cultural symbols in their buildings, language and the acquisition of paideia, the
good breeding and behaviour that went hand in hand with an education in the Greek classics.
The best-known example of the relationship between emperor and a Greek-speaking province is to
be found in the correspondence between Trajan and the younger Pliny, governor of Bithynia and
Pontus, a province made up of two kingdoms absorbed by Rome in the first century BC. While the
people of the province were Thracian in origin, its culture was overwhelmingly Greek: there were
ancient Greek cities on the coastline and new foundations had been added inland. However, at the
beginning of the second century AD, the prosperity of the region was being undermined by poor
administration. Petitions had been sent to Rome with complaints of corruption against two of its
governors. Too many major city building projects were started and then left uncompleted. The
situation had to be taken in hand and the emperor Trajan sent Pliny, one of his most experienced
senators, from Italy to examine the affairs of the troubled province. He arrived in 111. There are forty
issues on which Pliny and the emperor communicated over two years and among them was the
problem of how to deal with Christians.
The very fact that there was concern tells us a great deal. This was a good distance from the cities
of Syria and the province of Asia where the early Christian communities had been recorded. Here
they are seen as a distinct group; there is no hint of any residual link to Judaism. Pliny notes that it is
not only the towns, but also villages and rural districts that are infected through contact with this
wretched cult. There are men and women of every age and class. (There is no other independent
account from this period of such a flourishing Christian population.) When questioned, the Christians
deny wrongdoing and they claim that their activities involve no more than meeting once a week before
dawn to chant verses to Christ as if he were a God and to bind themselves by an oath to abstain from
theft, robbery and adultery. In a separate ceremony they engage in some kind of meal that involves
food of an ordinary, harmless kind. These meetings had already been banned under general
measures that prohibited political societies.
 In reply, Trajan urges caution. There should be no hunting out of suspects. Anonymous accusations
should be disregarded: they create the worst form of precedent and are quite out of keeping with the
spirit of our age. Only when a Christian is actually brought before him should Pliny deal with the
matter. Even then Christians who have lapsed (a reminder that conversion did not necessarily last) or
who are prepared to swear an oath to the traditional gods should be released whatever their previous
conduct. If they do not recant, however, they should be executed after due warning while those who
are Roman citizens should be sent to Rome for trial.
In this instance, being an active and unrepentant Christian was now seen as a capital offence. This
was the same period, and in the reign of the same emperor, that Ignatius of Antioch was taken to Rome
for execution as a Christian. So what exactly was the offence? The fact that no action would be taken
against a Christian if he or she made an oath to the gods and showed reverence to the statue of the
emperor suggests that a gesture of loyalty to the authorities was crucial. It is easy to understand why.
Jesus had been executed as an enemy of the empire, a man accused, even if on a fabricated charge, of
conspiring to be king of the Jews and thus a direct threat to the Romans. This echoes the hostile
crowds in Thessalonica: These men all act against the edicts of Caesar, saying there is another king,
Jesus (Acts 17:7). Those administrators acquainted with Judaism would also have known that a
messiah was traditionally linked to military and public upheaval and so for this reason alone those
who followed such a leader were suspect. Only a very few years later a self-proclaimed messiah in
Jerusalem, Shimon Bar Kosiba, was to lead a major revolt against Rome. So the concern was
justified. (One cannot expect Jews, let alone Roman administrators, to have known how Christians
had adapted Isaiahs suffering son to create their distinct form of messiah.)
Further suspicion would have been aroused by the Christian practice of meeting in secret. In both
the Greek and Roman worlds, associations (collegia) were widespread. Many, especially those
concerned with the professions, were considered respectable and emperors allowed Jewish groups to
gather to collect Temple tribute and soldiers to participate in the cult of Mithras. Burial clubs were
also permitted. The rest were officially frowned upon. In the specific case of Bithynia, Trajan had
insisted on a ban on all associations unless they had already been established under the local laws of
a city. No Christian group would have at this period received such recognition and so would have
fallen under the ban. Pliny mentions how he tortured two Christian slave girls, said to be
deaconesses. The information he gained through this brutal treatment (which was standard in the
examination of slaves) was no more than that their cult was degenerate and carried to extravagant
lengths.
This reflects the prejudices of an upper-class Roman. Roman religion was highly ritualised. There
was an intense distrust of what was known as super-stitio, a broad and somewhat flexible term
covering any kind of exotic or over-exuberant religious activity. The Roman historian Tacitus, a
friend of Pliny, regarded Judaism as a superstitio, although he grudgingly accepted its ancient origins
gave it some respectability. It was in the Jews rejection of the Roman gods that the superstitio lay
but Tacitus also condemned the Egyptian worship of the god Serapis in Alexandria. For Pliny the
extravagance of Christians was part of the same pattern, an unsettling religious activity that deserved
nothing more than contempt (he used the word superstitio in the letter to Trajan, here translated as
cult). The fact that slaves, and female ones at that, had some official position in the cult cannot have
helped its cause.
So a cluster of factors accounts for the persecution of those Christians who persisted in the
practice of their faith: they were seen as disloyal to the state, as members of an association at a time
when these were declared illegal in Bithynia and as guilty of participation in a cult that offended
Roman convention. However, until the empire-wide persecutions of the third century, the authorities
refused to overreact against Christianity. At Dura-Europus a Christian community appears to have
been worshipping peacefully in the 230s. In the African provinces there is no record of any execution
of a Christian before 180. Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, emperor from 13861, shared Trajans
distaste for witch-hunts. Eusebius quotes an imperial reply from Antoninus Pius to the proconsul of
Asia, Minucius Fundanus, warning him not to prosecute individual Christians simply on petitions or
mere clamour. Antoninus Pius, who, in contrast to his restless predecessor Hadrian, stayed in Rome
like a spider at the centre of a web, noted how Christians simply became more determined when
attacked. In one response to a city council in Asia he reminded the councillors that Hadrian had
written to provincial governors telling them only to take action against Christians if it was clear that
they were actually scheming against the Roman government. Those launching unscrupulous
prosecutions of Christians should themselves be prosecuted. The governor should hear accusations in
person. In a large province this might mean waiting for some time for him to arrive at an outlying city,
another restraint on impetuous accusations. In this period, AD 120250, it was more likely to be mob
hysteria than state initiatives that led to the rounding up of Christians.
While the references to Christians in pagan literature and official documents remain few, there is
evidence that Christians were now seen as a distinct group, even if a discordant one. One opponent,
writing about AD 200, describes Christians as a crowd that lurks in hiding places, shunning the light;
they are speechless in public but gabble away in corners.2 How the communities grew is unknown.
In his History of the Church, Eusebius provides an overview for the second century AD from a fourth-
century perspective that suggests large-scale conversion by itinerant preachers: Staying only to lay
the foundations of the faith in one foreign place or another, appoint others as pastors, and entrust to
them the tending of those newly brought in, the preachers set off again for other lands and peoples
with the grace and cooperation of God, for even at that late date many miraculous powers of the
divine spirit worked through them, so that at the first hearing whole crowds in a body embraced with
a wholehearted eagerness the worship of the universal creator. Here there is an echo of the Acts of
the Apostles. Whole communities appear to have been converted en masse by the skill of itinerant
ministers. So in the Acts of John, when the apostle John prays in the great temple to Artemis in
Ephesus that the demon who lives there might be driven out by God, the altar of Artemis is said to
have split into pieces and half the temple to have fallen down. The astonished crowds announce their
conversion. The casting out of demons is seen as a particularly potent expression of divine support. In
another text a martyr drowns at Caesarea in Palestine and an earth tremor sweeps the victim ashore.
Overawed by the wrath of God against the persecutors, the whole town is converted. These can
hardly have been real events but Celsus, writing his attack on Christianity in the later second century,
also talks of Christianity spread by preachers who penetrate remote villages and country houses.
A series of apocryphal stories (meaning, in this context, texts, usually of a much later date,
wrongly attributed to the apostles or other early Christians) of the apostles written in the second or
early third centuries are often disregarded as of no historical value, yet they tell a great deal about
how Christians saw themselves in this period. They share a common theme. An apostle arrives in a
city, preaches and converts many. Usually a high-born woman is among the converts and she then
calls on her husband to renounce sexual relations with her. The infuriated husband succeeds in return
in having the apostle sentenced to death. The emphasis is not only on the distastefulness of sex,
horrid intercourse as the Acts of Thomas puts it, but on the apostle challenging the traditional social
hierarchy and the subverting of the institution of marriage. Christians are presenting themselves as the
representatives of a counter-culture.
One of the most interesting of these Acts, in this case one from the second century, is that of
Thecla, a wealthy woman from Asia Minor who renounces the marriage offered her, breaks with her
family and baptises herself. She then meets the apostle Paul (who is given a subsidiary role in the
drama) and he commissions her to go and preach. The Acts of Thecla must have struck a chord with
women; it was translated from the original Greek into Syriac, Latin and other languages. The crusty
Tertullian, an arch conservative so far as women were concerned, condemned it for encouraging
women to believe that they had the right to baptise others. It shows that there were some Christian
groups where women assumed prominence, but very little is known of them.
More sophisticated pagans mocked the credulity of Christians. In his The Passing of Peregrinus,
the second-century writer Lucian, one of the most fertile minds of the period, ridicules them. The hero
of The Passing, an unscrupulous philosopher by the name of Proteus, worms his way into Christian
circles in Palestine, persuades their gullible members that he is a prophet, offers interpretations of
their texts and even composes some himself. He proves so successful that the Christians treat him as
second only to Christ. His activities, however, land him in prison but his fellow believers rally
around to defend him. Lucian describes the Christians as so credulous that they really believe they are
going to live for ever, that they are justified in despising all the Greek gods and that they will be
saved by that crucified sophist himself. It proves all too easy for a sophisticated charlatan like
Proteus to gain their allegiance.
Communities converted en masse are notoriously unstable and many of the new Christians must
have lapsed (as Plinys own comments suggest). Yet a charismatic preacher can create a sustained
religious movement. The early twentieth-century Congolese prophet Simon Kimbangu, who came
from a Baptist background, began preaching in the Belgian Congo in 1921 and within a period of only
six months achieved an enthusiastic following. Kimbangu saw himself as a Christ figure: he had his
own twelve apostles and preached ascetic renunciation. Crowds flocked from the plantations to hear
him speak and hospitals emptied as the sick left them to be cured. The word spread that a ngunza
(prophet) and mvuluzi (apostle, messiah) was among the Congo people. Kimbangu was said to raise
the dead. His village, Nkamba, was renamed New Jerusalem. The movement was so powerful that it
was seen to threaten the Belgian imperial authorities. European missionaries were furious that
Kimbangus preaching achieved far more than their own activities. When he managed to evade the
first attempt to seize him, his followers announced that his escape was yet another miracle. He was
eventually arrested and sentenced to death. Kimbangu was never executed but spent thirty years in
prison where his pious behaviour gained him more converts. He died in 1951 but his movement
continued without him. His Church of Jesus Christ on Earth was one of the first to be admitted to the
World Council of Churches.3
If one is looking for a similar example in the early Christian world, then Gregory the
Wonderworker appears to offer a parallel. Gregory came from an aristocratic background in
Neocaesaraea in Pontus, the province where Pliny had served. He had been a student of the great
theologian Origen in Caesarea in Palestine and had adopted the name Gregory, the reawakened one,
after his conversion to Christianity. He returned to his home town in about 240 to become bishop. It
was said that there were only seventeen Christians in Neocaesaraea when he returned and only
seventeen pagans left when he died thirty years later. In the adulatory Life of Gregory, written by the
Cappadocian Gregory of Nyssa in the 380s, he comes across as a true miracle worker. He expels
demons, lifts enormous boulders, changes the course of a river and brings a plague to an end. When
some pagans who had packed too tightly into a theatre called upon Zeus for more space, Gregory
ensured that God struck them down by disease for such brazen idolatry. Yet there is no archaeological
evidence for the spread of Christianity in Neocaesaraea in the third century: the citys coinage shows
that pagan festivals were still in full swing in the 260s and the accounts of Gregorys success now
appear exaggerated. It seems more likely that miracle working had become part of the literary
presentation of any early church leader. Gregorys prestige probably derived from his power as an
aristocrat able to get things done in an age of social breakdown. As an individual Gregory might well
have offered an administrative and charismatic energy lacking in the provincial or local government,
a sign of the growing importance of bishops in the civic networks of city life.
It is notoriously difficult to evaluate a conversion. An early model is, of course, Pauls dramatic
revelation on the road to the Damascus, so powerful that Augustine is said to have used it to shape his
own account of conversion in the Confessions, even though Augustine only came to his new religion
after a long and fraught process of self-discovery. Conversion may not in reality have been traumatic
or as sudden as Pauls, and it is easy to exaggerate the contrast between Christian and other religious
communities. Many features of the early Christian congregations the initiation rite of baptism and a
communal meal such as the Eucharist would have been recognisable in other religious fellowships.
The reading of texts at weekly meetings was a well-established Jewish practice even if there is no
record of any pagan cult having such an extensive reliance on sacred writings. Nor was the worship
of a single all-powerful god unique to Christianity and Judaism. One study of Anatolia makes the
point well: Outwardly, at least, there was much in common between the paganism of late Roman
Asia Minor and contemporary Judaism and Christianity. God was an awesome, remote and abstract
figure to be reached through the agency of divine intermediaries, such as angels, or human ones such
as prophets. The language which men chose to describe the supreme god of both pagans and
Christians was sometimes indistinguishable, and had close affinities with language that was taken
over and elaborated in the philosophy of the age.4 Belief in a single supreme god penetrated to quite
humble levels. Many tomb inscriptions mention theos hypsistos, the most high God, a term used by
Jews from the second century BC. By the second century AD, this might also refer to the god of both
pagans or Christians. So, for the Anatolians, conversion might not have been as dramatic as Christian
sources suggest. An inscription from the tomb of one Neikatoris from Mysian Hadriani proclaims that
he had gained greatest honour among all men, and brought joy to the holy people of the highest God,
and charmed them with sacred songs and readings, and who sleeps now immaculate in Christs
place.
Nor did the church encourage sudden conversions. Two texts from third-century Roman sources,
Rome and Carthage, show that an elaborate ritual was in place for converts in the western empire.5
Supplicants for admission to the community would present themselves to the teachers with sponsors
to vouch for their sincerity. They must distance themselves from pagan rituals and occupations that
require them to respect these. In the process of instruction, which might take three years, catechumens
would be continually interrogated for evidence of good conduct. They would be repeatedly exorcised
as if there was a persistent fear that the devil would infiltrate the church through the medium of
unworthy applicants. A successful commitment would be followed by hearing the gospel. A final
exorcism would lead to the day of baptism on Easter Sunday followed by the first participation in the
Eucharist. This, then, is a slow process by which an individual moves from one state of mind and
code of behaviour to another.
In the end, it is hard to say what drew people to Christianity in these first centuries. This was a
world where spirituality was flexible, where new cults rose and fell and drew from each other. This
was as true for those societies outside Greek culture as for those within it. A very distinct Syriac
Christianity (Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic) flourished in cities such as Nisibis in Syria and Edessa
on the frontier with Persia. Missionaries from these cities converted King Trdat of Armenia in 311
and he declared Christianity his state religion well before Constantine did the same in the western
empire. Missionaries from Syria reached Ethiopia in the mid fourth century. Then there are the twenty
bishops recorded in Persia in AD 235 who themselves led missions that took Christianity as far as
Basra (in southern Iraq), Qatar and the modern Oman and Yemen. The royal family of Kerala in
southern India might even have been converted in the early third century. By the end of the second
century, and then only in a few areas, Christianity spread to the Latin west. So while the early
Christianities were distinctive sects which were Jewish in origin but capable of adapting their beliefs
in Christ to a Greek environment, they had the flexibility and vigour to expand well beyond that.
 CHAPTER TWELVE
Open Borders
THE OVERLAPPING WORLDS OF CHRISTIANS AND JEWS

CHRISTIANS FIRST MET IN PRIVATE HOUSES. THE EARLIEST KNOWN example of a church comes from the
remote city of Dura-Europus on the Euphrates (in modern Syria). This had been a settlement of the
Seleucids, one of the Greek dynasties that succeeded Alexander the Great, but from AD 160 the
Romans had transformed it into a garrison town from where they could lead the defence of the eastern
empire against a newly aggressive Persian empire. The inhabitants were a lively mixture
descendants of the original Macedonian settlers, migrants from the surrounding steppes and the
trading city of Palmyra, Jews who retained links with the ancient Jewish communities of Babylonia,
and a small group of Christians. From inscriptions bearing some of the Christians names it appears
that they were outsiders, Greek speakers who were probably in service with the Romans. In about
240 a house was converted into a church with a baptistery joined to it. Frescoes in the baptistery
show Christs miracles and what appear to be the two Marys approaching the empty tomb. There is a
Good Shepherd and a representation of Adam and Eve. Its congregation is estimated at about sixty. In
the church fragments of papyri were found which contain Christian Eucharistic prayers in Hebrew,
even though the congregation was also worshipping in Greek. A red cross marked the door to the
street and so here Christians seem to have been able to worship openly. The Romans were prepared
to tolerate them, perhaps because of their contribution to the defence of the town.
Not far away, preserved when the Romans constructed siege works against a Persian attack, a
synagogue was found, also decorated with frescoes, among them rare scenes of Moses receiving the
Law and leading the Israelites out of Egypt. The synagogue congregation was much bigger than that of
the Christians. The Jews were worshipping in both Greek and Aramaic. Wall paintings in either a
church or a synagogue are otherwise unknown from this period. Here both draw heavily on Old
Testament images but choose different ones.
Such finds show how complicated the relationship between Christianity and Judaism remained.
Here, one finds an immigrant Christian community living alongside a larger and probably native
Jewish group but apparently completely separate from it. In this same period, there was also a group
known as the Ebionites, the poor ones, the name suggesting a group that saw their poverty as a mark
of piety.1 They claimed to be the authentic descendants of the first Christians, still Jewish and
respecting Jesus as a major prophet. They rejected the virgin birth and the attempts of Paul to break
with the Law. One can guess that there were many other compromised positions.
The destruction of the Temple in AD 70 certainly marks some form of turning point in the
relationship between Judaism and the emerging Christian communities. There was another in AD 135
when a Jewish rebellion, by Shimon bar Kosiba (often known as Bar Kokhba), was decisively
defeated by the Romans. Shimon had declared himself the longed-for messiah and his ruthless
concentration on military victory was in line with earlier messianic traditions. Those Jewish
Christians who refused to transfer their allegiance to this new messiah appear to have been executed
(although the only evidence for this comes from Christian sources). The suffering in the environs
around Jerusalem that followed the revolt was intense, and the Romans themselves appear to have
taken heavy losses. Any remaining goodwill the Jews had enjoyed from their overlords had been lost.
 This revolt may well have been the catalyst that encouraged the Christians to distance themselves
from Judaism, leaving behind a few marginal Christian groups such as the Ebionites. The Romans
added a further insult to the Jews by allowing a Gentile Christian bishop to be installed in the new
colony (one Marcus of Caesarea, according to Eusebius). Christians pressed home their advantage by
claiming that the humiliations of AD 70 and 135 were punishment to the Jews from God for their
betrayal of Christ. Their own survival showed that they were now the favoured ones, even able to
earn the goodwill of the authorities.
Whatever the catalysts that forced the breakdown, the process by which the two religions
separated from each other was tortuous. The New Testament shows that there was a variety of ways
in which Christians used or discarded their Jewish inheritance. The Letter of James is still set in a
Jewish framework while, in contrast, the Letter to the Hebrews suggests that the Christians have
superseded Judaism. Conflicts with Jews are well documented in the letters of Paul and the gospel of
John. In the second century the surviving texts show a similar range of attitudes and confirm that one
cannot talk in any generalised way of distinct Christian and Jewish communities. A major problem
remains the almost total lack of Jewish sources in the four centuries after the comparative wealth of
those of the first century, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo and Josephus.
At one extreme there is Theophilus, said to have been the sixth bishop of Antioch, writing in the
second half of the second century to one Autolycus, a learned pagan whom he was trying to convert.
In the opening paragraph of his letter, Theophilus confirms that he is a Christian and claims that it is a
mark of Christians that they are anointed by the oil of God. Theophilus is sympathetic to Judaism
and he tells us that he was converted to Christianity from paganism through the books of the prophets.
In other words, rather than becoming Christian first and then seeking support in the prophecies, he
starts the other way around. He is heavily dependent on Jewish sources. He rubbishes Greek
philosophy and the traditional Greek deities and preaches instead the importance of the Hebrew
scriptures. The Law, he argues, is central to Christian morality and it is only in a few instances, the
observance of the Sabbath, for instance, that Jesus changed it. It is a remarkable feature of this
apparently Christian letter that Jesus is hardly mentioned. The most direct reference is rather to the
logos, where Theophilus draws directly on the gospel of John. He seems to have known the beginning
of this gospel and also some of the teachings from the Sermon on the Mount but little more. There is
no deeper reflection on the significance of Christ and it has even been noted that if Autolycus had
been convinced by the letter he would have been just as likely to convert to diaspora Judaism as to
Christianity.
One work of Theophilus, now lost, was an attack on Marcion who had died probably only a few
years earlier in about 160. Marcion is one of the most interesting and effective figures of early
Christianity. He came from Sinope, a prosperous Greek city in Pontus, where some reports say his
father was the bishop. He must have grown up just at the time that Pliny was administering the
province and he seems to have made a fortune from the shipping industry. He was clearly an
impressive figure, a successful businessman, a brilliant and energetic organiser and an original
thinker. Marcion was also aggressively ascetic. He was so hesitant in embracing materialism and so
abhorred sexuality that he rejected marriage. The foetus was a repulsive coagulated lump of flesh,
nourishing in the same slime for nine months.2 All his followers had to commit to celibacy.
Determined to make an impact on the emerging Christian community in Rome, he arrived in the
capital in the late 130s and pressed a large donation on them.
 In contrast to Theophilus muted references to Jesus, Marcion was an enthusiast for Christ. Christ
was, of course, the Son of God, who had appeared in human form and who had preached a new
gospel of divine goodness. Marcions emphasis was on the new. While many of his fellow
Christians were searching the Hebrew scriptures for evidence of prophecies of Christs coming,
Marcion made the radical and shocking claim that they had nothing to do with Jesus at all. He was
actually outraged by the immorality of the Old Testament God. Jesus may have been the Son of God,
but surely this could not be the temperamental god of the Hebrew scriptures, lustful in war as he
was. This gods role was as a demiurge (from the Greek demiourgos, a craftsman, the term that Plato
had used in the Timaeus to describe the force that had created the world). His actions, said Marcion,
had been restricted to this creation and to setting in place his own Law. His behaviour, as any serious
reading of the scriptures made clear, showed that he could not be the true god of mercy and love.
Marcion blamed him, in fact, for the suffering and crucifixion of Christ it was this very act of
betrayal of the innocent Jesus by the Hebrew god that released human beings from any allegiance to
Judaism. A totally different and superior god, one as yet unknown to humanity, reigned above the god
of the scriptures and it was he who was the father of Jesus. With Jesus arrival the works of the
creator god, the demiurge, could safely be discarded as no longer relevant. The gospel now ruled in
its place.
Marcions vision of a perfect transcendent god appears to come from Platonism. Plato had argued
that there was a hierarchy of spiritual levels. So, in Marcions version of Platonism, one could have a
supreme deity, below which there were lesser gods such as the creator god of the Hebrew scriptures.
Yet, while Plato had taught that the ultimate spiritual reality could only be grasped by a long process
of reasoned thought which led up through ever higher states of knowledge, Marcion believed that this
god had been directly revealed through Jesus, just as Jesus had revealed himself to Paul in a vision.
Marcion was a docetist, that is, he believed that Jesus only used a human body as a medium. He could
hardly have maintained his divinity if he had been encased in that sewer that was the womb.
Unlike some of his contemporaries, Marcion refused to denigrate the Jews (he was even taunted by
the more outspoken of his opponents for his sympathy for them). They had, after all, suffered under the
inconsistent rule of the demiurge. It was the demiurge, not the Jews themselves, who must take
responsibility for the crucifixion. Certainly Marcion saw the Jews as far inferior to those who had
accepted Christ but he accepted that they too might ultimately be saved. In fact, he even found himself
in a form of alliance with the Jews against those Christians who could see prophecies of the coming
of Jesus in the scriptures. Jesus, Marcion argued, really was an unexpected arrival, totally unforeseen
by the prophets of old.
It used to be argued that Marcion compiled the earliest canon of texts, choosing the letters of Paul
and a single gospel to make the first New Testament. It is possible, however, that Marcion simply
adopted the texts that had reached Pontus before he left for Rome. Marcion does not name the gospel
he selected although there are later traditions that it was a truncated version of Luke. Quotations from
it, however, suggest some relationship to either Matthew or Mark but it may have been an otherwise
unknown gospel used only in Pontus. The letters of Paul he chose (ten in all), appear to be an early
collection addressed to seven specific churches.3 Seven was a symbol of the universal, as seen in the
seven churches of the Book of Revelation. The seven churches of Pauls letters thus proclaim him as
the apostle of the universal church and this is why some unknown compiler may have selected them as
such. Marcion probably came across this collection but he tampered with the letters, omitting
passages that he claimed were later additions.
 Marcion was an impressive advocate of a Jesus Christ who revealed a message of salvation from
a universal transcendent god. He believed that Paul was the only apostle who had fully grasped the
nature of Christs revelation. The Letter to the Galatians, in particular, showed that Paul had
recognised the inadequacies of the Hebrew scriptures (see Galatians 4:35). The other apostles had
not recognised Jesus as he truly was, the spiritual figure who had brought the world of the creator god
and his Law to an end. Paul had been right to break with those Christians who had not realised the
truth and had clung to Jewish custom
Marcions thinking showed rigour and clarity and so provided a convincing analysis of many of the
issues that were still fuzzy in the minds of those Christians who thought less deeply. He showed up the
contradictions between the two Testaments, just when many Christians were trying to gloss over them.
However, in the second century, the break with Judaism and the Law and the rejection of the god of
the Hebrew scriptures were too radical for the Roman Christians and Marcion was expelled from
their community. Unabashed, Marcion founded his own churches which spread so widely that in many
parts of the empire they rivalled or even replaced mainstream Christianity and were still active three
hundred years later. Even in the fourth century, Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, had to warn members of
his church to take care when they were looking for a church in a foreign town in case they ended up in
one run by the Marcionites!
Marcion and Theophilus mark two boundaries of an emerging Christianity, acquiescence in a
Jewish Christianity at one extreme and total rejection of the Jewish God at the other. There are a
significant number of texts in between that retain the links between Christianity and Judaism while
arguing for the superiority of Christianity. One of the most remarkable documents in the debate is
Justin Martyrs Dialogue with Trypho the Jew. Justin Martyr had a Roman background he was
brought up in a Roman colony in Samaria, probably in the early years of the second century AD but
he spoke and wrote in Greek. He was attracted first to the traditional pagan philosophers Stoics,
Pythagoreans and, most profoundly of all, the Platonists. However, he found none of these satisfying
and was converted to Christianity by a wise old man who showed him how Christ had fulfilled the
Hebrew scriptures.
At some point, probably in the 140s, Justin travelled to Rome and was able to teach there, in the
comparatively tolerant reign of Antoninus Pius. (He was martyred by order of the city prefect when
persecution resumed in the subsequent reign of Marcus Aurelius.) One of his most important works
was his First Apology, addressed to the emperor, in which he asks for Christianity to be judged on its
own merits. He pleads that there should be no persecution of Christians simply because of their name
or rumours about their atheism or immorality. Addressing the emperor as a philosopher and lover of
culture, he argues, rather provocatively perhaps, that the Greek philosophers, Plato foremost among
them, had been inspired by Moses and the Jewish prophets. These had had the true wisdom, which is
now represented by Christ. The Greek philosophers had squandered this inheritance through their
intellectual squabbles and division into rival groups. Now the world must return to Christ.
In his Dialogue, Justin engages in a discussion with a Jew, Trypho, who like himself has a
background in philosophy. The Dialogue is set in Ephesus where Trypho has fled as a refugee from
the revolt of 135. The tradition of the dialogue, in which opposing views are presented in a
conversational argument, goes back to Plato and so Justin would have been well acquainted with it
from his own studies. Plato presents each side in full but his side, as usually argued in the person of
Socrates, inexorably progresses to philosophical victory. Justin is remarkable in that he too presents
both sides, Jewish and Christian, fairly. Trypho holds firmly to his own beliefs even though, as the
Dialogue progresses, Justins voice becomes the dominant one. Trypho is no mere figurehead and at
times one feels that Justin is unable to provide a coherent response to his arguments. Unlike later
more polemical Christian dialogues, Justin does not end his work with Trypho admitting defeat and
agreeing to convert. Trypho is always given serious arguments. While many opponents of Christianity
spread rumours that Christians indulged in cannibalism or free sex, Trypho rejects them: those things
about which the multitude speak are not worthy of belief; for they are most repugnant to human
nature. He has no need to stoop to abuse. It may well be that Justin is accurately reproducing
dialogues he has had with sophisticated Jews.
The Dialogue provides an excellent overview of the differences between Jew and Christian in
their attitudes to the scriptures. Trypho stresses the contradiction between the Christian assertion that
they accept the authority of the scriptures and their refusal to follow some of their requirements such
as circumcision and the laws on diet. The Law, Justin replies, was instituted as a means of punishing
the Jews, as events have shown and, in any case, Christians have taken on other burdens including
the threat of martyrdom. The crux of the argument centres on the apparent contradictions in Christian
belief. Trypho reminds Justin that in Jewish tradition the messiah has never been a divine figure but
always a human one and there was never any prediction of a messiah suffering crucifixion. What right
have the Christians to claim that Jesus is a divine messiah? Furthermore, there is no Jewish prophecy
that predicts that God will enter the world as a human being, especially through the weak device of a
virgin birth. The ensuing discussion, which gets heated at times, shows that there can be no common
ground between these two views. Jews cannot compromise on the unity of God: he simply could not
have another significant divine force, his Son, beside him. Christians believe in a divine messiah,
however much this breaks with Jewish tradition. The Dialogue shows what were now unbridgeable
fault lines between the two faiths.
These fault lines are emphasised by a tussle over the interpretation of scripture. The Dialogue
raises a number of issues that have often resurfaced in the history of Christianity. For a start, which
text does one use? The Christians use the Septuagint but surely, Trypho argues, the original Hebrew is
preferable, especially when discussing issues such as the virgin birth where Matthew has used a
faulty translation of the Hebrew. (Justin is forced into replying that he believes the translation to be
more trustworthy than the original!) Trypho accuses the Christians of interpreting the texts to suit their
purpose, using allegory in an unjustifiably imaginative way to support their beliefs. One can
understand why Jews felt angry with this. Why should their own scriptures be twisted to support the
claims of an upstart religion that considered itself superior? Often, Trypho remarks, it is clear that a
reference, to a king, for instance, is to a king in the text itself; in one case he cites Solomon. One
could not pretend that here the term king actually refers to Jesus. In short, in so far as it rested on
Jewish prophecy the whole of Christian belief is built on weak foundations.
Justin hits back by staking the claim that the Christians have taken on the Jewish inheritance. Justin
does not reject the richness of the Jewish past or pretend that the Jews had not once enjoyed the
favour of God, but explains that that time has now passed: For the prophetical gifts remain with us,
even to the present time. And hence you ought to understand that [the gifts] formerly among your
nation have been transferred to us. Gentiles who have accepted Christ can be judged on the same
terms as the prophets of the past. Those who have persecuted and do persecute Christ, if they do not
repent, shall not inherit anything on the holy mountain. But the Gentiles, who have believed in Him,
and have repented of the sins which they have committed, they shall receive the inheritance along
with the patriarchs and the prophets, and the just men who are descended from Jacob [my italics]
even although they neither keep the Sabbath, nor are circumcised, nor observe the feasts.
Justin is particularly important in developing a new conception of Jesus as logos, the Word. For
Philo, logos was still seen in somewhat abstract terms, as an intermediary, between God and the
world. Philo did not know anything of Jesus and one has to wait for Justin to stress that Jesus moves
beyond Philos logos in being a human being among other humans. Next to God, we worship and
love the logos who is from the unbegotten and ineffable God, since also He became man for our
sakes, that, becoming a partaker of our sufferings, He might also bring us healing. Jesus has been
freed from the confines of Philos Platonic philosophy. As the passage suggests, Jesus remains
subordinate to the Father. In the Dialogue, Justin refers to him as the First Principle created before
all things and he also describes Jesus as if he were a torch lit from the existing fire of the Father but,
as with any transfer of fire, not diminishing the status of the original.4
Justin retains some respect for Judaism even if it has proved blind in failing to recognise the
Messiah. He is not alone. In a remarkable text, which in its original form probably dates to a few
years later than Justin, the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies (so-called because of the mistaken belief
that they were by Clement, bishop of Rome), the writer goes so far as to excuse the Jews for failing to
recognise Jesus. Jesus was hidden from those who followed Moses as a prophet. The Jews could
hardly be condemned for this but they should also not condemn Christians for not recognising Moses.
This generous approach assumes that there is one supreme God who has allowed two traditions to
exist side by side in harmony.
However, alongside these works, which show some tolerance of the differences between Jew and
Christian, there was an ominous development in Christian thought. It centred on the belief that the
Jews were unworthy of their heritage and especially so as they had rejected Jesus. One finds its birth
in Pauls First Letter to the Thessalonians, where the Jews are described as killing the Lord Jesus,
and in the confrontation between Jesus and the Jews in Chapter Eight of Johns gospel. In the so-
called Epistle of Barnabas, which may have been written as early as the 90s but which is more
usually dated to about AD 130, after the Roman suppression of a Jewish revolt in Alexandria that had
split Christians from Jews, Barnabas suggests that the Jews had never been the favoured nation.
They had completely misinterpreted the circumcision of Abraham and believed that it was a physical
requirement. What was called for instead was a symbolic circumcision of the ear and the heart
which would open believers to the Word of God and the prophecies of Jesus coming. In Chapter
Four, Barnabas recounts how God gave the covenant to the Jews but they lost it at once when Moses
broke the tablets he had received. Barnabas knew his scriptures well and argued that the prophecies
in it were prophecies of Christ that the rejected Jews would, of course, never have been able to
recognise. So the entire history of those who think that they are the Israelites is one of separation from
God. The Christians had entered the void that their apostasy had left.
The theme that God is punishing the Jews for their pretence is taken up by Melito of Sardis, active
in the last third of the second century. Melito is the first recorded pilgrim to Palestine, in the sense of
one who went specifically to see where it was proclaimed and done. He also refers to the Hebrew
scriptures as the Old Covenant, the first time the scriptures were seen as a distinct body of texts that
contrast with those of a New Covenant or New Testament. His hometown, Sardis, the ancient capital
of Lydia, was an important Roman administrative centre. Excavations have also shown that it was the
home of a substantial Jewish community whose members played a role in town government (although
the large synagogue uncovered there dates from much later than the second century). It may have been
this ebullient community that impelled a committed Christian like Melito to respond with a
denigration of the Jews.
Melitos only surviving work is a Paschal Hymn, part of a liturgy that would be recited by a
congregation. The text is presented as an argument. If one is making a sculpture or building out of
wax, clay or wood, it begins, one starts with a model, then one gathers the material and finally one
completes the work itself. At this point the model is redundant. Melito takes this as an analogy of the
history of the Jews. They were no more than the model now surpassed by the reality of the Lord.
When the church arose and the gospel took precedence, the model was made redundant, conceding
its power to the reality, and the law was fulfilled conceding its power to the gospel. Reaching back
into Jewish history, Melito notes how the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed in order to liberate the
Jews from the evils of Egyptian rule. So too, Jesus has to be sacrificed as the Lamb in order for the
Christians to be free of Jewish rule. Jesus had always been with the Jews, just as the Jews had
always been with the Egyptians, but now they had betrayed him. While earlier writers, Matthew, for
instance, placed responsibility for the death of Jesus on the Jews (Matthew 27:25), Melito goes
further, launching a denunciation of the Jews for deicide, the killing of no less than God himself. O
lawless Israel, what is this unprecedented crime you committed, thrusting your Lord among
unprecedented sufferings, your Sovereign The Sovereign has been insulted; the God has been
murdered; the King of Israel has been put to death by an Israelite right hand. Melito has gone beyond
berating the Jews as killer of Jesus into making the crucifixion, a public and humiliating event, the
most terrible crime imaginable.
Melitos rhetoric proved highly popular. Early translations of the hymn (from the Greek) have been
found in Latin, Syriac, Coptic and Georgian. It was one of the founding documents of the tradition of
Adversus Judaeos, polemic aimed at the Jews (the name comes from a text by Tertullian). This
tradition brought together many of these themes: that the Jews had proved unworthy of their
inheritance, which had now been transferred to the Christians, that the need for circumcision, the
observance of dietary laws and celebration of the Sabbath had passed with the transfer, that the
destruction of the Temple and the expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem reflected Gods just punishment
of them and that they would for ever, as a race, be defiled by the crime of deicide. It was these
harsher judgements that prevailed, especially after the reign of Constantine when the church had
imperial backing against the Jews. So one finds the dismissive invective of Ambrose of Milan and the
crude diatribes of John Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople.
The intensity with which the issues were debated surely reflects two lively traditions, one old and
one new, battling with each other for converts. Some Christian communities had evolved a theology
that allowed them to appropriate the Old Testament, interpret it as a prophecy of Christ and use it as a
foundation for their own evolving New Testament. Yet there were still important groups such as the
Marcionites who rejected the God of the Hebrew scriptures completely. In contrast, there were the
Ebionites, the poor ones, self-proclaimed Christians in the late second century, who still accepted
circumcision. Even as late as the late fourth century, John Chrysostom directed his invective at
Christians who visited the synagogues because they believed that an oath made there was more likely
to be respected. The fact that Christians could find in the synagogue many of the same scriptures that
they were using in the Christian churches may well have made it difficult for them to understand why
Judaism needed to be rejected. There were no clear boundaries between the two religions, no matter
how much Christian leaders attempted to define them. Spiritual migrants passed from one side to
another, often unaware, it seems, that they were doing anything untoward. In many respects Judaism in
the first century AD fragmented and a cluster of successor religions emerged that would accommodate
Jesus Christ to a greater or lesser extent.5
 CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Was There a Gnostic Challenge?
WHAT, IF ANYTHING, EXISTS BEYOND THE MATERIAL WORLD WE experience around us? There was intense
dispute in this period among Jews, pagans and Christians alike over what survived after death, a
soul perhaps, or even a reconstituted earthly body, and whether it could experience reward or
punishment. Then there was the issue of who might be selected for special favour, what forms of
commitment, belief or behaviour were necessary to ensure entry into a state of bliss rather than one of
misery or even eternal punishment. Furthermore, how could one learn about the world beyond when
there seemed no empirical evidence for a future existence? Did God reveal himself, and something
about his realm, directly or did he use intermediaries, human or divine (angels)? Was it possible for a
spiritual emissary to appear in human form to tell of the world beyond? Answers varied from one
period to another and even within the same religion. For some, especially those in the Platonist
tradition, which was to have an important influence on Christian theology, the immaterial world
above was more real and stable than the volatile and shifting material world below. It could be
reached through an intense and prolonged period of reflection.
In the second century the issues were brought into the open by the conflict over what is known as
gnosticism. Few subjects have been so intensively analysed, especially since the discovery of a cache
of what were claimed to be gnostic texts at Nag Hammadi in 1945, yet the more the so-called gnostic
texts are examined the more elusive their message seems to be.
As an introduction to gnosticism let us take one of the most popular texts, the so-called
Apocryphon [or Secret Book] of John. The original text may have been a meditation on how a
human being could aspire to divinity but, as it survives in copies today, it was framed within an
account of a vision by Christ himself to John, one of the sons of Zebedee, in the desert somewhere
near Jerusalem. No less than three versions were found among the Nag Hammadi texts.
The vision begins with Christ telling John of an Invisible Spirit, which exists even beyond the
realms of heaven. It is known in some sense through its thoughts, one of which is personified as a
mysterious figure by the name of Barbelo. Barbelo is given many titles, among them Providence, but
his prime role is as mediator between the Invisible Spirit and all else that exists. He appears in many
forms: one is as a transcendent form of humanity, another is as the Mother, a female consort of the
Invisible Spirit, through whom a child is born. There is another figure, the Perfect Human, Adamas,
who appears to be a prototype for human beings as they will actually appear on earth. There are other
entities aeons, as they are often referred to in the heavenly court. Every time a new aeon appears
it goes through a process of being welcomed and accepted by the Invisible Spirit and Barbelo. For
the time being these aeons all live in harmony with each other. This is a settled sphere of being.
However, there is a troubled spirit among the court and this is Sophia, or Wisdom. She proves an
unruly figure, refusing to abide by the conventions of mutual acceptance that prevail. She in her turn
brings forth a thought, an offspring so ugly that she has to take it out of heaven and hide it in a cloud.
His name is Ialdabaoth, which appears to be a corruption of the Jewish Yahweh, Lord of Sabbaths.
He grows up entirely unaware of anything more about himself or his birth other than that Wisdom is
his mother. Deluded as he is, he believes that he is God and there is no other god but him.
This causes consternation in heaven. A world is being created which is totally ignorant of the true
Divinity. Ialdabaoth and his helpers put together the shape of a human being Adam. Each body part is
the creation of one helper. However, the whole is sterile and it only comes alive when heavenly
forces trick Ialdabaoth into breathing life into it. It soon shows that it is more intelligent than its
makers. Ialdabaoth tries to remove the spirit that he has unwittingly planted in the human but he only
succeeds in drawing out a woman, Eve, who responds to the man whose body she has just left. The
couple go through a process of awakening to each other. Aware now that he has released living things
he cannot control Ialdabaoth throws the couple out of Paradise. Here the myth of the Revelation and
the Genesis account of the expulsion from Eden overlap.
To ensure that the punishment he wishes to inflict on the world persists Ialdabaoth has sex with
Eve. She conceives and the result is Cain and Abel. Wakened himself to the power of sexual desire,
Adam then begets his own son Seth with Eve. Seth carries the original spirit that was breathed into
Adam so that this spirit survives in the material world, despite the attempts by Ialdabaoth to go on
destroying it. Floods, plagues and earthquakes instituted by Ialdabaoth threaten the world in typical
apocalyptic style. Barbelo in his role as Providence has to intervene to save the human race through
the medium of Noahs Ark. These interventions ensure that some human beings retain the memory of
the need to resist Ialdabaoth and the possibility of restoration to heaven. The Secret Book itself is
part of this memory and listeners to it are warned of the dire consequences for those who hear its
teachings but refuse to accept them.
The Apocryphon was probably the text of a single Christian community. There are references to
baptism in it so presumably this served as an initiation ceremony for newcomers. Its beliefs weave
together the story of an Unknown God (the Invisible Spirit) with that of an original human spirit that
has been submerged by the destructive powers of a subsidiary god. The world he has created is full
of evil forces, not least of which is sexual desire, here seen in negative terms. However, for those
who have absorbed the revealed teachings there remains the possibility of a return to heaven.
The Apocryphon is comprised of a number of interlocking sources that are to be found, often in
different guises, in other texts. The concept of the evil creator god appeared in Marcion but in the
Apocryphon the writer, unlike Marcion, has accepted the scriptures to the extent of weaving the
Genesis stories into the myth. There are also Platonic influences. The idea of an intermediary, in this
case Barbelo, is very much part of Middle Platonism and echoes the logos of Johns gospel which is
also some form of intermediary between the divine and man. The idea of a few having the secret
knowledge is common in initiation cults, many of them older than Christianity. It is the Greek word
gnosis, knowledge, which gives gnosticism its name, although the term gnosticism as the description
of a movement dates only from the eighteenth century.
Before 1945, what was known about gnosticism was largely drawn from texts written against it by
orthodox Christian writers between the second and fourth centuries. (The term orthodox is used
here, somewhat anachronistically perhaps, to describe the writers whose works later became
authoritative in the Christian tradition.) Several of these, notably Irenaeus, Tertullian and Epiphanius,
will appear in later chapters as influential figures in their own right. However, it is very difficult to
pin down exactly what Irenaeus and his supporters meant by gnosticism and whether in fact they
merely used the word as a general term for heretics. The full Greek title of Irenaeus most important
work (normally known by its Latin name Adversus haereses) suggests it is an attack on those who
teach what is falsely called knowledge . Irenaeus may simply have been taunting rival Christian
sects or even members of his own congregations for claiming that they were superior because they
were claiming to know: They consider themselves mature so that no one can be compared to
them in the greatness of their gnosis, not even if you mention Peter and Paul or any of the other
apostles They imagine that they themselves have discovered more than the apostles, and that the
apostles preached the gospel still under the influence of Jewish opinions, but that they themselves are
wiser and more intelligent than the apostles. This can hardly be seen as a reasoned attack and
Irenaeus had to admit that the gnostics themselves were not impressed by his criticisms. They ask,
when they confess the same things and participate in the same worship how it is that we, for no
reason, remain aloof from them; and how it is that when they confess the same things, and hold the
same doctrines, we call them heretics.
It is hard to give any coherent definition of gnosticism but one can set out some of the features
associated with the term. There is an awareness of a divine spark, which is confined to a few human
beings, usually a privileged elite. (A similar view is found among the Stoics and the gnostics may
have borrowed it from here.) This spark fell downwards from heaven, usually through a crisis of
creation during which a lesser god achieved power in the material world. The world this god has
created is essentially flawed and even the bodies in which humans live are corrupted. In contrast, the
spiritual world has a completeness, the Greek word used is pleroma, literally fullness, but human
beings are unable to reach it unaided.
Recovery is possible because the transcendent God and his helpers in heaven are able to liberate
the divine spark in those favoured. A redeemer figure, one able to release the spark features
prominently, and this is often portrayed as Christ. In one of the Nag Hammadi texts Jesus talks to his
brother, Judas Thomas: While you accompany me, although you are uncomprehending, you have in
fact, already come to know, and you will be called the one who knows himself. For he who has not
known himself has known nothing, but he who has known himself has at the same time already
achieved knowledge about the depth of all.1 However, if Christ had become fully human he would
surely have been contaminated by the material world, so it was assumed that he appeared within a
human body in the likeness of human flesh as Paul had put it in Romans (8:3). (Gnostic texts often
draw on Paul.) One version suggests that Jesus was a human being into whom Christ had been
absorbed. Christ had then left the Jesus being before the crucifixion, which Jesus suffered, in its full
agony. Finally, according to Irenaeus, gnostics believed that Christ returned to raise the body of Jesus
from the dead. While many so-called gnostic ideas have parallels in ancient Middle Eastern religions
and Platonism provides the concept of a higher spiritual life and a degraded and inadequate material
one, this has been given a Christian setting
The complaints that the orthodox Christians heaped upon those they classed as gnostics were
varied. There was ridicule of the convoluted stories and myths (of which the Apocryphon of John is
a good example), which were contrasted with the comparative simplicity and clarity of the scriptures.
The true Christians could always be identified because they spoke with a united voice that derived
directly from Jesus and the apostles. The gnostics claimed a secret knowledge only because they
were afraid of speaking openly. Jesus, in contrast, was open to all who showed faith. The gnostics
claimed too to have acquired their heresy from a single source but their opponents suggested that this
was Simon Magus, the father of all heresy, as revealed in Acts. The gnostics were also accused of
wild and immoral behaviour. They so despised the body, it was said, that they abused it in every way
possible or, alternatively, destroyed it through fasting.
By 1945 most agreed that it was unfair to define a movement by referring only to the description of
it given by its opponents. The German scholar Walter Bauer had transformed the context within which
early Christianity was discussed through his book Orthodoxy and Heresy in Early Christianity, first
published in German in 1934 (but not in English until 1971). Bauer argued that the concept that there
had been an original Christian orthodoxy that evil heretics had conspired to overthrow was
profoundly flawed. Christianity had evolved in a number of different local cultures and in different
ways. It was simplistic to argue that gnosticism was a heresy, in the sense of a distinctive deviation
from some established truth. It was misleading to talk of a struggle within Christianity when the
concept of Christianity itself was so fluid. This was an important move forward as it helped liberate
gnosticism from the predominantly negative aura that surrounded it. It could be examined as a
movement in its own right and on its own terms. If Bauer was right, and early Christianity was made
up of a variety of competing beliefs, then gnosticism itself might not be as monolithic or sinister a
movement as it appeared. There might even be many gnosticisms and the term might have no
coherence at all. No further progress could be made, however, when there were so few surviving
texts.
All this changed in 1945. In one of the most fascinating and influential developments in the study of
early Christianity, thirteen codices containing a total of forty-six distinct texts, forty of which had
never before been found complete, were discovered by two Egyptian peasants in a sealed clay jar at
Nag Hammadi. They were translations into Coptic (the Egyptian language written using the Greek
alphabet) of what were originally Greek texts and were quickly proclaimed to be gnostic. The way
in which the Nag Hammadi documents were concealed together shows that they had formed part of a
library of a community, possibly of a nearby monastery. The fact that they were concealed suggests
that they had been declared heretical but were considered precious enough by their owners to be
preserved rather than destroyed. The date of their concealment, possibly the late fourth century (as an
analysis of the papyrus on which they were written suggests), was just when the New Testament
canon was being finalised but also when imperial legislation required the burning of heretical books.
This may well have been the reason why they were hidden.
The Nag Hammadi documents are a mixed bag. Perhaps the most celebrated of the texts has been
the gospel of Thomas. However, there were also gospels attributed to Philip and John, the sons of
Zebedee, and to Jesus brother James. These are full of intriguing details about Jesus that appear, as
there is no other evidence to support them, to be largely fictitious, with the disciples names used to
give them spurious authority. The Gospel of Philip has fragmentary references (from a papyrus with
much missing) of Jesus kissing Mary Magdalene and the disciples complaining that he loved her more
than them. The text has given fantasists a field day, culminating in bizarre and unsubstantiated
suggestions that the two married and had children. There were also a Gospel of Truth, A Treatise
on the Resurrection, three versions of the Apocryphon described earlier and even a fragment from a
paraphrase of Platos Republic (which Plato had written in the fourth century BC).
Most of the works date from the second and third centuries AD although many of the texts draw on
earlier material including the Jewish scriptures and possibly traditions from other eastern religions.
Some of the texts are overwhelming in their obscurity, others have a clear message and set out
alternative visions of Christianity that certainly do not agree with the traditional accounts of
gnosticism. Take the Gospel of Truth, for instance. This is not so much a gospel as a meditation on
Christs mission to a troubled world. The gospel tells us that there is one supreme Father, God of all.
(There is no mention of a distinct and inferior creator god.) The world lived in anguish and terror as
a result of humanitys ignorance of the Father until Christ came down on earth to bring salvation. He
appeared as fully human this is not a Christ appearing as a spirit in the body of a human being but
was not recognised because of the darkness in which men lived, and so was put to death. He now
became a fruit of the knowledge of the Father. His death and resurrection brought the possibility of
knowledge to those who were prepared to understand. The world was made a place of light as a
result of Christs sacrifice and it seems that the knowledge is available to all, not simply an elite.
His followers are enjoined to feed those who are hungry and give repose to those who are weary.
There is no turning ones back on the world it must be lived in with compassion and hope. The
writer specifically tells his audience that they must not look back to the past.
The Gospel of Truth is uplifting and inspirational. In its stress on the contrast between light and
darkness, it echoes the Qumran writings, passages in Paul and, of course, John. However, Irenaeus
condemned it as blasphemous, apparently on the grounds that it differed from the gospels of the
apostles. Here is an excellent example of a text that had been unknown beyond Irenaeus
condemnation but one that can now be read in full in its original version. It becomes obvious that
Irenaeus attack is unfair. Although the text is called a gospel and does in fact contain good news,
if seen as a homily or a meditation there is little one can object to in its teaching.
The Gospel of Truth has been linked to a specific preacher, Valentinus. Valentinus was a Greek
from Alexandria who moved to Rome in about 140 and set up a school of philosophy there. Like
Justin Martyr he was able to teach within the comparatively tolerant atmosphere under the emperor
Antoninus Pius. Valentinus built up a substantial following (one report suggests that he was even put
up for election as bishop of Rome) and several of the Nag Hammadi texts are by his students so that
scholars talk of Valentinianism as a distinct movement even if the boundaries are not easy to define.
If the Gospel of Truth is his, he was well trained in Greek rhetoric and employed a sophisticated
style of writing. It often seems that it is Valentinus and his supporters who are Irenaeus main
obsession and as Irenaeus is known to have spent some time in Rome the antagonism may have arisen
when they became competitors for the same congregations. In his Adversus haereses, Irenaeus
describes Valentinus as adapting the principles of the heresy known as gnosticism to the peculiar
character of his own school. In other words, rather than considering Valentinus teachings in their
own right, Irenaeus sees them as a development from a movement that he has already classified as
heretical. He goes on to lambast Valentinus as arrogant and spiritually elitist. He and his followers
believe themselves to be already saved in contrast to those lower in the spiritual hierarchy who can
only be saved through faith and good works. Yet now that some of Valentinus writings can be read, it
appears that he might not be a gnostic at all.
One of the major criticisms Irenaeus makes against the Valentinians is that they indulge in every
kind of immoral behaviour. He argues that the gnostics see themselves as a composite of spiritual and
human natures, the latter of which they despise to such an extent that they feel free to indulge in every
form of sexual defilement. Even if they pretend to be ascetic, it is normally only a sham. However,
there is not a hint in any of the Nag Hammadi texts that such practices are encouraged. We see a wide
range of attitudes to the body, some undoubtedly dismissive, but not necessarily more so than those
practised by some of their opponents (for instance, Tertullian, whose misogyny will be discussed
later).
Another group of documents, eleven of those from Nag Hammadi, have been termed Sethian
because of the prominent place they give to Seth, the son of Adam and Eve. As has already been seen
in the Apocryphon of John, Seth is contrasted with Cain and Abel in that he has received the pure
spirit from above and those descended from him preserve this. As the spirit is already embedded
within humanity, even if only in a favoured few, the prominent role accorded Jesus by Valentinus, for
instance, is not so vital. So Christ appears as a much more marginal figure and in some cases it is
Seth himself who is the Saviour of humankind. Almost every aspect of Sethianism is contested: how it
originated, how it developed and whether it ever maintained itself as a distinct movement. Sethianism
is pessimistic about the material world and emphasises the inadequacies of the creator god. This
distinguishes it from Valentinianism which is more positive about the world, sees Christ as offering
salvation to all humanity, rather than to a small elite, and accepts the creator god of the Old Testament
as the true God.
The Nag Hammadi documents have shown that gnosticism was a much more complex movement,
if it was a movement at all, than was originally thought. It is clear that the polemical attacks on the
gnostics by Irenaeus and others provide a distorted picture. Irenaeus confronts groups such as the
Valentinians whose beliefs may have differed little from his own version of Christianity. If one
examines the Nag Hammadi texts without preconceptions, it is individuals such as Valentinus who
become more prominent, not as followers of a pre-existing gnosticism, but as original and influential
teachers in their own right.
This is not to deny that some texts do show most of the features that had been traditionally
described as gnostic. One is doceticism, the idea that Christ is a spiritual figure who only appears to
be human. In two Nag Hammadi texts, the Apocalypse of Peter and First Apocalypse of James,
both probably dating from the third century, Jesus escapes the crucifixion. Jesus explains to Peter, for
instance, that a substitute, the first born, the home of demons and the stony vessel in which they
dwell, was the one crucified. In the First Apocalypse of James Jesus tells James at the resurrection
that he did not suffer at all and the crucifixion was simply a means of exposing the impotence and
arrogance of the world rulers. In the Acts of John, Jesus appears in different guises to different
observers as a child, a young man and an old man. He shifts appearance at will. Yet these texts are
offset by others, the Apocryphon of James, for instance, in which Jesus tells James and Peter that he
did indeed suffer on the cross that you may be saved.
Again we see the diversity of early Christianity at a time when it was spreading from the Jewish
world into Greek-speaking communities. This perhaps explains why there is a strongly anti-Jewish
element in many gnostic writings: Judaism was a foreign and now derided culture for new converts.
Many of these, Valentinus and Justin Martyr being good examples, were intelligent and well-educated
Greeks who were used to the critical analysis of theological and philosophical issues. This was a
time of lively intellectual debate and one can hardly expect Christianity to be segregated from this. As
the churchs hierarchy and theology were still in a state of flux, individuals were comparatively free
to explore their own understandings of the religion and some gnostic ideas were the result of this.
One can see how some ideas classified as gnostic became embedded in Christianity if one
imagines an educated mind confronting a Jewish text such as Genesis for the first time. Take Genesis
1:267, for instance: God said, Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness
The difficulty here for Jews and other monotheists was the plural does it imply there is more than
one god? For those who followed Plato, however, it was not such a concern as they believed that
there were spiritual intermediaries between God and the material world. These could well be the us
of the Genesis verse. Philo interpreted the verse in this way: the us refers to Gods powers that have
a distinctive subsidiary role in creation. So this verse supported an approach in which heaven is
peopled with other divine figures, as many so-called gnostic texts suggested. Here gnosticism may
be little more than the application of Platonic ideas to difficult scriptural passages.
Take as an example the Genesis story of the expulsion from Eden from a non-Jewish perspective.
The god of Genesis is certainly not transcendent. He shows jealousy, vindictiveness and an apparent
inability to foresee the results of a situation that he has created. He had warned Adam (at 2:17) that if
he ate of the tree he would die. Yet Adam did eat and failed to die. In fact, he went on to found the
human race! How could this god have made such a mess of things and ended up with just what he had
hoped to avoid a human race with the ability to thwart him? No intelligent enquirer into the Genesis
text is going to fail to see these contradictions. One of the Nag Hammadi texts, the Testimony of
Truth, contains a critique of the Genesis narrative. If the author of the Testimony was a Platonist
believing that the Supreme Good is totally transcendent, above all emotion and the vagaries of the
world, then his critique makes sense. In this context the belief that the god of the Old Testament is a
lesser form of deity is entirely understandable. One can hardly pretend that Genesis does not present
major theological problems about the nature and power of the creator god.
The Nag Hammadi texts offer many other challenges and few of them will ever be fully
understood. However, one must keep in mind that elements of gnosticism may have been the result of
a thoughtful approach to the contradictions of the scriptural texts from those who believed in a
transcendent god but did not find him in the Hebrew scriptures. Nor is there anything odd about
gnostics wanting to understand the inner secrets of nature. The Greek philosophers had been at work
on the problem for centuries. This is not the last case we will meet where what comes to be classed
as heretical is in fact a sincere attempt by committed Christians to deal with what appear to be
intractable theological problems. Educated converts who confronted the unresolved tensions of early
Christianity, and the large number of competing Christian groups, were likely to join schools where
these issues were discussed at a sophisticated level. This was the custom among the pagan
philosophers and Christianity was still open to such debates. Human nature being what it is, there is
no wonder that many like Irenaeus who, as we shall see, had learned their Christianity from the
martyrs, felt excluded! Where he was wrong was to see the gnostics as forming a movement that could
challenge his Christians. There was no group that could do that and those accused by Irenaeus
would no doubt have been amazed to find themselves cast together.
The most celebrated of the Nag Hammadi texts is the Gospel of Thomas. Fragments of this
gospel had been known before 1945 but the Nag Hammadi text was the first complete text. The
gospel is not really a gospel at all in the sense of a life of Jesus, his baptism, travels, trial, crucifixion
and resurrection set within a connecting narrative. It simply contains 114 sayings of Jesus. It begins:
These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymus Judas Thomas wrote
down. And he said, Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death. 2
Some seventy-nine of the 114 sayings, by one count, echo verses to be found in the four gospels,
primarily the three synoptics. So the author of the gospel has either drawn on earlier documents which
overlap with other sayings traditions such as Q or has drawn out some of these and presented them
in an original collection compiled much later.
The issue has caused great controversy. One school argues that the Gospel of Thomas is one of the
earliest Christian documents and thus reflects a more authentic Jesus than is known in the canonical
gospels. In this view, an orthodox church suppressed Thomas and also the gnostic tradition it
represents. This assumes, of course, that gnosticism, if this is indeed the underlying philosophy of the
gospel, was well established in the first century. The rival school notes that many themes one would
expect to find in a first-century Christian text of Jesus sayings, such as apocalypticism, are totally
lacking in Thomas. There are gnostic elements in the sayings but they reflect the beliefs expressed in
other texts known to be of the second century. There is no reason, this school argues, to see Thomas
as a founding document of gnosticism. It proposes a date of between 140 and 160 for the gospel.
As the opening verses suggest, the sayings recorded by Thomas concern secret knowledge
transmitted to an elite group. If this describes the earliest form of Christianity, Jesus does not appear
to have come for all humankind but only for those lucky enough to hear him. Certainly Jesus sees
himself as everywhere on earth It is I who am the light which is above them all. It is I who am the
all. From me did the all come forth, and unto me did the all extend. Split a piece of wood and I
am there. Lift up the stone and you will find me there (Saying 77) but this is not the historical Jesus
surrounded by enormous crowds. He requires intimacy from his chosen followers: He who will
drink from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden
will be revealed to him (Saying 108).
Jesus talks of the insights achieved once one has found knowledge through him: When you come
to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realise that it is you who are the sons
of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty [the poverty of
materialism] and you are that poverty (Saying 3b). The material world is worthless: Whoever has
come to understand the world has found only a corpse, and whoever has found a corpse is superior to
the world (Saying 56). This suggests that knowledge will reveal the essential sterility of the
material world but bring at the same time recognition that there is something superior beyond it. The
wonder, Jesus tells Thomas, is not that the human body gave birth to the spiritual, but that the spiritual
deigned to dwell in a human body (Saying 29). At death, one rises as a spiritual being in this the
gospel is at one with the Treatise of the Resurrection. However, in contrast to some texts, and the
gospel of John, for instance, achieving knowledge will allow one to live more fully in this world:
The Kingdom of God is within you (Saying 3). Knowledge transforms the knower on earth; he or she
does not have to wait until death for this to happen. So this gospel is talking of the coming of the
kingdom, even if only for a select few, on earth.
In short, it is hard to talk of a gnostic movement, still less of a gnostic church, in the second
century. A preferable approach is to see Christian theology in this era as interplay between Gentile
newcomers, many of them well educated in Greek philosophy, and more traditional Christians. There
is something in the view put forward over a hundred years ago by Adolf von Harnack that gnosticism
was ruled in the main by the Greek spirit and determined by the interests and doctrines of the Greek
philosophy of religion.3 The gnostics were often doing no more than asking the questions that
intelligent outsiders could be expected to ask of a movement which was still not clear in itself about
what it believed. Some of their answers were extreme, straying into the realms of myth-ridden
fantasies; others were not so different from those of their co-religionists. Yet there is nothing in any of
the texts which provided an anchor for any sustained community. It is hard to imagine how gnostic
sects might even have communicated with each other, let alone a wider world. There had to be an
institutional structure if Christianity was to survive, even if this inevitably brought a narrowing of
intellectual perspectives in the name of unity.
Postscript: The Gospel of Judas
The monastery of San Antonio in Polesine is to be found in a quiet corner of medieval Ferrara in
northern Italy. It is a timeless spot where the Benedictine nuns welcome visitors with stories of the
depredations of church property by Napoleon when he was in northern Italy as if it had happened
yesterday. A remarkable sequence of frescos from the early fourteenth century survives in the chapels
of the monasterys church. They resonate with the influence of Giotto but show an unexpected
originality: on the Flight into Egypt, Jesus nestles against Joseph rather than Mary; in another scene he
is shown releasing the souls from Limbo. One of the most startling is a crucifixion scene. The cross is
already upright and a ladder is lent against it. Ascending the ladder is Jesus himself. Two soldiers
perched on the crossbar await him, one with a nail in his hand. Jesus himself is taking on the
responsibility of being crucified.
If Jesus was predestined to die on the cross and he participated in his own crucifixion, then the
role of Judas, a figure so deeply derided in the Christian tradition, becomes more ambiguous. In April
2006, through the auspices of the National Geographic Society, which had acquired the fragmented
papyrus, it was announced that a Gospel of Judas had been found. It had probably been discovered
in Egypt in the 1970s (it is in Coptic), as part of a codex including texts already known from Nag
Hammadi, and hawked around dealers before being reassembled and translated. A text by this name
had been known, once again from Irenaeus, as a gospel of followers of Judas who believed that he
alone, knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal.
The gospel, as it was first presented to the press, appeared to present a subverted version of the
traditional account of Jesus betrayal with Judas now playing a good role as the one who helps
Jesus mission to succeed.4 He is distinguished from the weak apostles who have no idea of Jesus
true role, a possible echo of Marks gospel. Almost immediately there was a challenge by other
scholars who claimed that the first English translators had completely misread the place of Judas. In
fact, they argued, a careful translation, of a text that was far from complete, showed that Judas was
presented after all as he had always been, as the most devilish of the apostles.5 There were even
accusations that the original translators had been seduced by the chance of creating a sensation with
their good Judas. To this day academic and popular battles rage over the correct understanding of
early Christianity.
There are some important themes in the gospel on which there is general agreement. The apostles
are shown as weak and ignorant to such an extent that they are mocked by Jesus. Later they report to
him a dream in which they are sacrificing their own children. Again Jesus condemns them. Here the
gospel appears to be challenging the rise of the doctrine of apostolic succession, by which authority
is passed down through the apostles to each new generation of priests (one of the themes of Clements
letter to the Corinthians). The author is warning that the apostles do not deserve the status the church
is now giving them. The condemnation of the dream suggests that the author of the gospel is
confronting those Christians who offer themselves for martyrdom. A devilish Judas also has a part to
play. The author of the gospel makes the point that the apostles are worshipping a lesser god in error.
The true god of Jesus lives on a much higher plane. While some Christians were developing the
doctrine of atonement, that god willingly sacrificed his son for mankind, the author of Judas sees this
as impossible. No true god would ever do this. Jesus dies, not because God wants him to, but because
the devil in the shape of Judas betrays him. The evil Judas has been restored.
The Gospel of Judas gives a vivid, if disputed, picture of the internal struggles going on between
Christian groups. The writer of the gospel is horrified by what he perceives as the evildoing of an
emerging institutional church, especially its glorification of martyrdom and adulation of the apostles.
However, he presents his attack as a secret revelation that includes the knowledge imparted by
Jesus that there exists a heavenly kingdom beyond the god of the Old Testament. So the gospel is
important not so much for its depiction of Judas, but as a clear demonstration of the concerns raised
by an emerging institutional church. The champion of this church was Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons.
 CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Idea of a Church
PROPHECY RAN DEEP IN JEWISH HISTORY AND THE GIFT OF prophecy was recognised by Paul as one
way in which the Spirit could manifest itself in an individual (1 Corinthians 12:10). In the Didache,
the short manual of advice to Christian congregations, prophets are seen as pervasive in Christian
life. Visiting prophets are to be seen as high priests and if they can prove themselves the community
should support them. The problem lies in distinguishing between false and true prophets. The true
prophet, the congregations are told, does not ask for money for himself and behaves as he teaches.
Even so, spotting the real prophet was to prove a perennial problem in the churches.
In the 160s a new movement appeared in Phrygia (Asia Minor) that drew on direct prophecies
from God. Known as the New Prophecy, its leader was one Montanus, a failed priest of the cult of
Cybele according to his critics. Montanus was joined by two women, Prisca and Maximilla, who
were said to have abandoned their husbands. (This is another instance where women appear to have
fulfilled a prominent role in second-century Christianity.) The Montanists claimed that the Holy Spirit
had chosen their vocal chords through which to express his message: that the world was at an end and
the heavenly Jerusalem would descend, not to the site of the old Jerusalem, but to Phrygia itself. The
Montanists claimed to be inspired by the martyrs and they spoke against the belief held by gnostics
and others that there would be a spiritual rather than physical resurrection. Anyone who did not
recognise the Spirit in the voices of these prophets was warned that they must be lacking in faith. The
message spread quickly and was known in Rome, Lyons and Carthage. In a church that already
contained an impressive range of texts, here was a charismatic movement that threatened to bypass
and subvert them all.
Once again the problem had been raised of how one could define truth and falsehood. There was
as yet no coherent explanation of what exactly had been revealed about God by Jesus Christ and
whether this revelation had been for all time or was still in the process of unfolding. To some the
Montanists appeared to be harbingers of an imminent judgement, to others they were no more than
hysterical ravers whose utterings went beyond any form of reasoned belief. Yet even if the Montanists
were rejected, where else among the texts and congregations of the church could one find a secure
footing? Or was it simply a matter of letting Christianity spread as it willed, taking different forms in
different social and cultural contexts?
There was no clear distinction between orthodoxy and heresy in the early church. Originally the
Greek word heiresis simply meant choice, usually of a philosophical school that a student chose to
follow. The process by which the word was transformed by Christians into its later meaning of
wrong choice is hard to follow because precise definitions of what heresy involved took so long to
evolve and shifted with time. In retrospect, three elements of orthodoxy proved crucial. First was the
recognition of an institutional framework for the church within which truth, however it came to be
defined, could be protected. This was done by consolidating the positions of the bishops as
possessors of a pure faith that had been absorbed by the apostles from Jesus and then passed down
from one generation to the next through what became known as the apostolic succession. The second
was defining which texts were orthodox and which were not. This was a long process covering some
three hundred years but an important step was made when the four gospels were made canonical and
the others rejected. The third was extracting from the canonical texts, which were certainly not
unanimous in what they taught about God and Jesus Christ, the essence of what could be seen as
faith, those items of belief which were considered essential to Christianity. After much debate these
articles of faith were to be enshrined in creeds.
To give orthodoxy shape, it had to define itself against the alternatives, the wrong paths taken by
rival Christians, in other words the heretical. Heretics, many of them, of course, sincere Christians
as committed to finding the truth as their orthodox opponents, were painted in increasingly lurid
colours. They were agents of Satan as enemies of God and would certainly burn eternally in hell fire
for their arrogance in opposing the truth. One of the earliest and most comprehensive attempts to set
up an orthodoxy which defined itself partly through the condemnation of the heretical was Irenaeus
Adversus haereses, Against the Heretics, the Latin title of a work known in its Greek original as
On the Detection and Overthrow of What is Falsely called Knowledge . A rambling but important
work, it is one of the founding documents of orthodox Christianity.
Irenaeus came from Smyrna on the coast of Asia Minor. As a young man he had been a devoted
follower of the citys bishop, Polycarp, an account of whose martyrdom was one of the inspirational
texts of early Christianity. Polycarp comes across as a practical leader and gifted teacher, a man who
was of much greater weight, and a more steadfast witness of truth than Valentinus, and Marcion, and
the rest of the heretics, Irenaeus tells us. Legend recorded that as a young man Polycarp had known
John the Evangelist and Irenaeus treasured this personal link back through the generations to Christ.
The impact on Irenaeus of Polycarps martyrdom was profound and it left him convinced that the mark
of the true Christian lay in the readiness to face martyrdom. He left Smyrna and travelled west,
eventually becoming a priest in the Greek-speaking Christian community in Lyons. He also spent
some time in Rome and it was probably here that he came across Valentinus whose teachings he was
soon to denounce. While he was away in Rome, riots broke out in Lyons which led to the martyrdom
of some forty Christians, including their bishop, Pothinus. Irenaeus was asked to become the shattered
communitys new bishop.
Irenaeus had read widely in earlier Christian literature including the works of some of his
opponents. While he does not appear to have had a formal education in Greek philosophy he certainly
knew something of the techniques of rhetoric and how to present an argument. There are quotations
from Homer and Plato in his works. Even though the church had appropriated Jewish traditions and
scripture Irenaeus believed it was now broken from Judaism and he rejoiced in this. But in Christ
every blessing is found; and for this reason the latter people [Christians] had snatched the blessings
from the Father of the former people [the Jews], just as Jacob stole his blessing from Esau. He
singles out as heretics the Ebionites, who professed Jesus but who continued to follow a Jewish way
of life and refused to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin.
Instead Irenaeus is conscious of a church that has transcended its Jewish roots and is empire wide,
as his own migration from Asia Minor witnesses. In his writings he specifically mentions Christian
communities in Germany, Spain, among the Celts and in Egypt and Libya. He refers to Christians
involved in trading activities and even some working in the imperial service. He praises the overall
peace of the empire and the freedom its subjects have to travel. This suggests that the persecutions
which took place in 177 in Lyons, horrifying though they appear to have been in the sources, were the
result of local rather than empire-wide tensions. In fact, the period between the death of Marcus
Aurelius in 180 and 202 when the emperor Septimius Severus initiated a new bout of persecution
appears to have been relatively trouble-free for Christians and Irenaeus comments may have
reflected this.
 Once he had settled back at Lyons, Irenaeus found he was beset by rival Christian preachers.
Gnostics tended to set up their own schools within congregations and Irenaeus was particularly
irritated by the activities of one Marcos the Magician, a follower of Valentinus, in his own.
Adversus haereses was the response.
What is remarkable about Irenaeus work is the confidence it shows in the churchs mission.
Accounts from only a few years before, those of Justin Martyr, for instance, show a church on the
defensive, having to apologise for itself (the word used here in the sense of defend). One might
have thought that the brutalities that had been inflicted on the community of which Irenaeus was now
bishop would have cowed him. Yet he describes a church with a strong tradition of faith that is
clearly well defined and stable enough to be upheld against those within the church, notably the
heretical gnostics, who are assailing it.
There is, Irenaeus argues, only one God and his presence is consistent throughout the scriptures.
Irenaeus weaves these into a coherent narrative. When God created the world and Adam and Eve he
intended that humankind would grow in obedience and wisdom so that eventually the words of
Genesis, that man would be created in his own likeness and image, in other words, would become
as if divine, would be fulfilled. A phrase Irenaeus often uses is of humankind approaching near to the
uncreated. Alas things went wrong early on. Adam and Eve were like children, easily persuaded by
Satan that they could seize maturity for themselves without divine help. So they fell and the human
race remained in a state of immaturity. To coerce humankind towards the ultimate obedience needed,
God introduced the Law. This was a learning period as God was accustoming humanity to himself so
that human beings would grow in understanding. The Old Testament, as it had become since its
appropriation by the Christians as the source of their own prophecies, was thus a vital part of the
story. Neither God nor the text itself can be diminished.
The period of rule by the Law lasted until a state of relative maturity had been reached. Then God
decided that a new phase in history could begin with the sending of Jesus Christ to earth. Christ has
always been in existence, as the Spirit has been, and the terms Wisdom, in the Old Testament, and the
Word in the New (here Irenaeus followed the gospel of John) refer to him. (The linking of Wisdom,
used widely in the Old Testament to logos/Christ was an important development, even though some
church fathers preferred to associate Wisdom with the Holy Spirit.) While Christ was revealing God
to the world (again following John) it was essential that he was fully human in order to redeem the sin
of the human Adam. To counter the docetists, those who preached that Christ only appeared to be a
man, Irenaeus stressed that Jesus was visible and palpable, an actual demonstration of life. There was
no need to follow the gnostics in despising the material world or human existence. This link between
Adam and Christ, Christ as the second Adam, draws on similar images in Pauls Letter to the Romans.
The disobedience of Adam and Eve had been reversed by the obedience of Mary in agreeing to take
on the burden of bearing Christ and the obedience of Jesus himself in suffering on the cross. The Holy
Spirit is given an important role by Irenaeus. It was through the Spirit that the prophecies were
uttered, the coming of Christ was proclaimed, the virgin conceived, Christ was raised from the dead
and the Second Coming would be put in hand.
Irenaeus often refers to the coming of Christ as a recapitulation. The Greek original normally
means the summing up of an argument, a pause while the points made are reviewed, but Irenaeus also
seems to use it in the sense of a gathering in. All has been changed with the coming of Christ. Yet the
final revelation will not be complete until the Last Judgement when the just will be restored to their
full divinity in the image of God, promised in Genesis. Irenaeus was at pains to argue that the
resurrection would be of the flesh. He refused to follow his heretical opponents who argued, using
texts from Paul to do so, that the material body would not be reconstituted in the afterlife.
Irenaeus bitterly attacked heretics for using the scriptures selectively, especially in the way they
disregarded or even discarded some of the texts. By specious argumentation, craftily patched
together, they mislead the minds of the more ignorant and ensnare them by falsifying the Lords words:
thus they become wicked interpreters of genuine words. In a shorter and later work, the only other
work from among several recorded of his that survives, the Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, he
again stresses the importance of the Old Testament as a body of prophecies about the coming of
Christ. He reiterates the unity of the Christian message: the scriptures, the teaching of Christ, the
activity of the Spirit and the teaching of the church are all linked and reinforce one another.
The New Covenant that Jesus Christ has brought needs to be preserved through proclamation.
Again the Spirit is essential in guiding the church onwards: Where the church is, there is the Spirit of
God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church and every grace, and the Spirit is truth. The
mechanism by which the teachings are preserved is the church. Christs message has been passed to
the apostles and then on to their successors. The apostles have handed down to us one God,
announced in the Law and the Prophets to be the maker of heaven and earth, and one Christ who is the
Son of God. The idea is not unique to Irenaeus as it was a term used of the philosophical schools that
also passed their teachings down from founders and something similar is to be found in Clements
letter to the Corinthians. The prime purpose of the bishops is to keep the message intact and pass it
on. Irenaeus does not elaborate on the authority of bishops beyond this.
However, in order to make his theology fit with history Irenaeus often distorts the past. He
believed that to be fully representative of humankind, Jesus had to live through every phase of human
life including old age. This forces him to argue that Jesus lived to be an old man, even to the reign of
Trajan (which began in AD 98). It is not clear whether he believed that this was a resurrected Christ
who had lived on as such for many years or whether the crucifixion took place when Jesus was old.
Irenaeus claims that it was the apostles who passed on the tradition that Jesus lived to be an old man,
even though the gospels make it quite clear that he was crucified in his thirties and, according to Luke,
was only present in a resurrected form for forty days. Irenaeus ignores this contradiction.
There is another distortion. In order to explain how apostolic succession works, he provides a list
of bishops of Rome. He saw the empires capital as home to the most prestigious of the churches. In
fact, there was no presiding bishop that Ignatius could address when he wrote to the citys Christians
in 107. When one looks at Irenaeus list one can see that it is made up. Irenaeus claims that Peter and
Paul founded the church in Rome, even though Pauls own Letter to the Romans does not mention
Peter and makes it quite clear that the church was already in existence when Paul wrote to it. The
names of their successors Linus, Anacletus, Clement, Euarestus and Alexander seem to have no
other historical support and the list has been described as probably a pious fiction.1 So one needs to
be cautious about accepting Irenaeus claim that his hero Polycarp had actually met the apostle John.
(The dates make it unlikely. No apostle could have been born much later than AD 10 and Polycarp
died c.155 so John would have been improbably old if he did meet the young Polycarp.)
How did the apostles and their successors relate to the emerging Christian scriptures, to what was
eventually to become the New Testament? For Irenaeus the criteria for admission to the canon of
scriptures is, hardly surprisingly, the relationship of a specific text with the apostles, among whom he
includes Paul. He went on to limit the gospels to four, the first time this had ever been done. He did
not attempt to explain why the specific four gospels he has chosen deserved their inclusion. Rather, he
based his view on the naturalness of four four quarters of the earth, four winds and even, in an early
creative use of the Book of Revelation, four living creatures (Revelation 4:7). The authors he
provided for his chosen texts may have had no more basis in fact than his choice of early bishops of
Rome. It was now a hundred years after they had been written and there is no evidence other than
Irenaeus attributions in support of his claim.
Irenaeus traces heresy back to the father of heresy, Simon Magus (Acts 8:913), and so, just as he
creates a tradition of apostles handing on the true faith, he has rival traditions of those handing on
heresy a genealogy of heresy, as it might be called. Inevitably these heresies comprise a ragbag of
ideas and writings, many of which are anonymous. He introduces the idea that heretics were arrogant
in their attempts to subvert the truth and he uses a good analogy that describes a mosaic made out of
precious stones that depicts a king, here seen as a symbol of the church. Yet heretics break up the
original, rearrange the stones in the form of a dog or a fox and then claim that this is what the
king/church should look like.
The idea that there were four gospels and no more or less than this must have presented a
challenge to the church. The problem was that the significant differences between the portrayals of
Jesus, especially the massive discrepancy between John and the synoptic gospels, would have made
it difficult for any congregation used to one gospel to be prepared to accept another. Not surprisingly,
some felt that the confusion could only be resolved by amalgamating the four gospels into one. Tatian,
a Greek Christian from Syria who had become a student of Justin Martyr in Rome, set about creating a
single version of the four gospels, known as the Diatessaron (through the four). It may have been
written in the authors native Syriac (although it was probably soon translated into Greek). Tatian
omitted the genealogies of Christ in Matthew and Luke (these contradicted each other and could
hardly be reconciled) but reproduced much of the rest of the gospels, though in a revised
chronological order. With duplicate verses omitted, the harmonised gospel was just over 70 per cent
of the length of the original four. The Diatessaron became very popular in Syria and the east. It was
only in the fifth century that the four gospels reappeared in their original state when it is recorded that
Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus, a city on the Euphrates, collected up about two hundred copies of the
original Diatessaron in the 450s, destroyed them and replaced them with versions of the canonical
gospels. Even so, it is fascinating to note that the Koran refers to a single Christian gospel and this
may well be the Diatessaron.
In contrast to the heretics whom he denounces, Irenaeus claims that the church has one soul and
one and the same heart, proclaims and teaches and hands on those things with one voice, as if
possessed of a single mouth. This ideology drew its strength from the Platonic belief that, ultimately,
truth was made up of a harmonious unity. This is, of course, questionable. The creation of Christian
orthodoxy was always to involve arbitrary and artificial boundaries and some uneasy compromises
between different traditions (and, as will be seen, between the scriptures and pagan philosophy). It
could not have been otherwise when the major issues of theology, the relationship between God and
Jesus, the ways in which Jesus human and divine nature co-existed and whether there was a physical
or spiritual resurrection, were philosophically intractable. It was the idea that there could be a single
truth and the possibility that it might be defined and passed on within an institutional framework and
upheld that was important. Irenaeus had provided a model for survival and, in the long term, it proved
more attractive than the closed and esoteric communities that challenged it.2
 CHAPTER FIFTEEN
To Compromise or Reject
CONFRONTING THE MATERIAL WORLD

THE DAILY LIFE OF CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES IN THIS PERIOD remains murky: the evidence is simply
scant.1 There is no surviving Christian art from before 200, almost no funerary inscriptions from
before the third century. The earliest church history, that of Eusebius, concentrates on lists of bishops
and graphic accounts of persecutions. So it is difficult to recreate the lives of second- or third-century
Christians. Some Christian apologists wished to emphasise the similarity of their lives to their pagan
counterparts. As Tertullian the ebullient church father from Carthage puts it in his own Apology: We
live together with you in this world, including the Forum, including the meat market, baths, shops,
workrooms, inns, fairs, and the rest of commercial intercourse, and we sail along with you and serve
in the army and are active in agriculture and trade.
A late second-century source, the Epistle to Diognetus, starts in much the same vein. The unknown
Christian author writes that Christians cannot be distinguished from pagans by their language, the
places where they live, in cities both Greek and barbarian. They appear to follow the customs of the
natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct. The differences, he goes
on, are more subtle. Christians live on a different plane as strangers in a foreign land. They are in the
flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of
heaven. He notes that while they marry and beget children like their fellow citizens, they do not
destroy their offspring. They eat together but do not share a common bed presumably a reference to
sexual continence. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their
lives. He goes on to complain that despite their lifestyle, they are assailed by the Jews as foreigners,
and are persecuted by the Greeks They love all men, and are persecuted by all.
This idea of Christians living in a foreign land where they are despised, and which they, in their
turn, are exhorted to despise, is also to be found in the c.140 text known as the Shepherd of Hermas,
from Rome. Hermas is told, by a man dressed as a shepherd who has been sent to him from heaven,
that the king of his country (God or Christ) might call him home at any time so that he must not
accumulate property on earth. Therefore, instead of fields buy ye souls that are in trouble, as each is
able, and visit widows and orphans, and neglect them not; and spend your riches and all your
displays, which ye received from God, on fields and houses of this kind. Here one has the outlines of
a specifically Christian attitude to life, based on restraint and charity. It is assumed, as in many other
early texts, that Christians will ascend straight to heaven.2
Concern for sexual continence ran deep in the Christian tradition. Jesus was unusual for a Jew in
being unmarried although it is Paul who most actively expresses distaste for sexual behaviour. This
was reinforced by the Platonic tradition that despised the desires of the human body as diverting the
attention from the philosophical contemplation needed to understand the immaterial world. While the
vast majority of Christians must have married, a respect for celibacy remained and sometimes this is
expressed in a positive way. The Acts of Thomas, a text originally written in Syria but which was
circulating in Greek translations by the middle of the third century, describes the travels of the
disciple Judas Thomas from Antioch eastwards through Syria to Mesopotamia and India. For
Thomas, commitment to Christ is essentially the offering of a pure body, healed by Christ from a state
of unworthiness. Conversion is often linked to recovery from serious illness or the exorcism of a
demon. After conversion, celibacy is expected and along with it a commitment to those still suffering.
Healing of the body and healing of the soul go hand in hand. The Acts assume that women will have
as active a ministry as men and this may reflect a more egalitarian Christianity on the eastern borders
of the empire than that to be found further west.
The fragmentary evidence relating to Christian marriages, especially those in the Latin west,
suggests that they were as patriarchal as Roman ones. The father is given absolute authority within the
family and this is now expressed within a specifically Christian context. The submission that the wife
makes to her husband is similar to that which the Christian should make to the Lord while the
husbands love for his wife should echo that of Christs for the church. Tertullian reiterates the
importance of patriarchy and assumes that it is the father who sets the Christian tone of the household
beneath him, extending his control to the slaves, stressing, as seen in earlier texts, that it is their
Christian duty, as well as their legal obligation, to submit to their masters. It appears that many were
forced to convert so as to create a fully Christian household.
A Christian wife also has her duties. In a treatise written to his wife, Tertullian outlines the
problems a woman experiences if her husband is not a Christian. Her pattern of prayer will be
disrupted by his insistence that she attend the baths with him, his banqueting plans will interfere with
her fasting, he will divert her with his own business when she wishes to attend to the poor. She will
need to attend pagan festivals with him and he will forbid any Christian activities in the house.
Socially conservative though he was, Tertullian even argues that it is better for a Christian to marry
another Christian below his social status than a pagan. Disparity of belief was accepted as grounds
for divorce (see 1 Corinthians 7) even though this appears to have conflicted with Jesus own
commands on the matter. Others, the writer of the Shepherd of Hermas, for instance, allowed divorce
as the formal end of a marriage but not the remarriage of a divorced spouse.
Christian family behaviour in this period was distinct in its condemnation of abortion and the
abandonment of newborn children. The practice of exposing babies, especially girls, was widespread
in the Roman world. Sometimes these unlucky children were saved. Hermas, for instance, claimed to
have been rescued from abandonment although he was then raised as a slave. (By the time he is
writing he has become a freedman.) However, the vast majority of these babies must have died. Jews
had always abhorred infanticide and Christians followed them. The Christian view was elaborated by
stressing that abandonment was akin to murder.3 This was an important ethical advance on pagan, if
not Jewish, custom, especially when Christianity became the predominant religion of the empire and
laws against infanticide were enforced. Outside this development very little is known of Christian
children at this period and it was not until later, for instance, that infant baptism became the norm,
although in Hippolytus Apostolic Tradition of c. 215 children, including those who are unable to
speak for themselves, are among those admitted to baptism alongside their parents.
It is right to talk of the Judaeo-Christian ethical tradition because Christians adopted so many
facets of Jewish life. This was seen in the requirements to support the poor, especially those who
were widowed or orphaned. This was linked to concerns that wealth was corrupting in itself so that
giving to the poor not only helped the recipients but liberated the giver as well. In his Similitudes,
Hermas discusses how rich and poor can live in mutual dependence. If the rich give to the poor, the
poor will pray to God, who is more sympathetic to their prayers than he is to those of the rich, to
favour the rich who will then help the poor even more! Hermas makes the analogy with an elm tree,
which is fruitless, alongside which a vine runs unproductively along the ground. If the vine is hooked
up to the elm, the elm will support its flourishing!
In his Apology, Tertullian gives a vivid picture of how a Christian community of his day, the early
third century, carried out its proceedings. The emphasis was on the common ownership of goods.
Christians share everything except their wives, Tertullian tells his pagan audience. A contribution to a
common fund is expected each month when Christians gather for worship and there are designated
groups orphans, shipwrecked sailors and abandoned slaves who are its recipients. Justin Martyr
concurs: What is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows
and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the
strangers sojourning among us in a word he takes care of all who are in need. One report of the
church of Rome tells of its support of over fifteen hundred widows in the mid-third century. This
centralised giving must have been an important factor in sustaining the growing Christian
communities.
The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, apparently written in Rome in about 215, gives specific
details of the requirements for acceptance into a Christian congregation. Hippolytus describes how
those who come forward for instruction are summoned before their teachers and questioned about
why they are attracted to Christianity. They must give full details of their marital status and
occupation and if they are slaves must confirm that they have the permission of their masters to attend
instruction. The slaves have to promise further that they will continue to please their masters if these
are pagan. There must have been fears that their conversion might be seen as an act of subversion and
rebound on the Christian community. As regards occupations, pimps and prostitutes are out, of course,
sculptors must give up any creation of statues of the pagan gods, actors cease altogether to attend the
theatre. Teachers are also expected to give up their jobs as these involve passing on worldly rather
than spiritual knowledge. They can continue only if they have no other occupation. Charioteers,
gladiators and priests of the pagan cults will be rejected as will anyone who dabbles in magic.
Those accepted are admitted as catechumens. There follows a three-year course of instruction that
may be shortened for good conduct. Any catechumen martyred in this period becomes baptised
through his or her own blood. For the rest, the ceremony of baptism is preceded by a fast and the
exorcism of demons by the bishop. Baptism is by total immersion in flowing water: Jesus baptism in
the Jordan provides the model. The rite of baptism involves the renunciation of Satan and then three
separate acceptances of belief, in effect an early creed. The catechumen must assent to belief in God
Almighty, then to belief in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born of the Holy Spirit and the
Virgin Mary, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and died, and rose on the third day living from
the dead, and ascended into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of the Father, the one coming to
judge the living and the dead, and finally to belief in the Holy Spirit and the Holy Church and the
resurrection of the flesh. While the resurrection of the flesh may still have been in dispute in the
Greek east, here it seems to have been accepted as an article of faith.4
Those who have been baptised can attend the Sunday services and participate in the Eucharist.
Justin Martyr in his First Apology of c. 15055 describes the particulars of the sacrament in some
detail: the priest presiding over the sacrament gives a thanksgiving over the bread and wine (mixed
with water) and then distributes it. Not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but
in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both
flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by
the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the
flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. Justin notes that the ceremony has been passed
down to the Christian communities through the apostles and reiterates the central place it has in
Christian worship. It seems to have been accepted that ingesting the consecrated bread and drink
gave life to the recipients and may have been associated with the spiritual transformation of their
physical bodies. The Eucharist must surely have served to give Christians an added spiritual
dimension. The elaboration of rituals, sexual continence and fasting before communion, and the
presentation of the ceremony as a spectacle (as can be still found in a Catholic high mass today)
developed in the centuries that followed.5
In the early fourth century, probably before Constantine had extended toleration to the church, a
council of nineteen bishops met at Elvira in Spain. Its proceedings, and the eighty-one canons it
promulgated, provide a picture of a Christian community which had to define its own values within a
predominantly pagan society. The first concern of the bishops appears to be the continuing attractions
of both Judaism and paganism and the need to define effective boundaries against them. Anyone who
offers a sacrifice to the gods is permanently excommunicated, and any Christian who sits down to eat
with Jews is also kept from communion. Ten years of penance is required for even watching
sacrifices and those who follow the pagan custom of burning candles in cemeteries during daylight
will be excommunicated. Christian girls must not marry pagans, by so doing they are committing
adultery of the soul. Nor may they marry Jews or heretics. Any parent who allows such a marriage
will themselves be banned from communion for five years.
(It was the offering of sacrifices that caused most concern. It seems to have been the touchstone
that defined admission to the community. The significance of the rejections needs to be emphasised.
Sacrifice, the ritual killing of an animal on an altar in front of a temple, was not simply a religious
ceremony. It was intimately connected to the protection and survival of the city and a centuries-old
relationship with the gods. By condemning sacrifice one was turning ones back on what it meant to
be a citizen or a member of an ethnic community. No wonder Christians saw themselves as foreigners
they had made themselves so by their commitment to Christ.)
The normal penalties for infringing the rules of conduct are a period of penance, sometimes as
much as ten years, or excommunication. (In many cases the excommunication was permanent but in
some cases if the miscreant was on his or her deathbed, fellowship of the church could be restored.)
A male adulterer may be pardoned on his deathbed if he renounces his partner: if he recovers and
resumes the relationship he can never be readmitted to the church. Women who leave their husbands
for another man can never be readmitted to the church, even on their deathbeds. Consecrated virgins
who break their vows and do not repent are permanently excommunicated. If they do repent and
refrain from further sex, they may be offered communion but again only on their deathbeds. In
comparison to the harsh treatment of sexual misdemeanours, other offences attract less condemnation.
Seven years excommunication from the church for a woman who intentionally beats her slave girl to
death, five years if the death is not caused intentionally, seems lenient.
The canons showed a growing concern with sexual behaviour. In many ways, they reflected the
traditional behaviour expected of women although for men the code was more rigorous than pagan
convention demanded: a Christian who commits a sexual offence is given a penance the first time but
is excommunicated completely if he offends again. All clergy must now be celibate. Those who have
wives must refrain from having sex with them and even evidence of sexual immorality in the past is
enough to prevent ordination. The only women allowed to live in a clerics house are his sisters or
daughters and then only if they have consecrated themselves to virginity. Those committing
themselves to perpetual virginity made up a small but growing number of Christians. The practice
offended conventional family values, which required the daughters of the family to be used to cement
alliances with other families, but there were benefits in that the virgins were given a status of their
own which may have been higher than that of a wife in a patriarchal society. In the fourth century,
however, some Christians preached an intense revulsion of all forms of sexuality, with women being
cast in the role of temptresses if they did not make a public renunciation of their sexuality.
One senses a growing feeling of common identity, not only through shared values but through the
creation of communities that ritualised and expressed those values in charitable support. These were
much more important than the arcane explanations of the more intellectual sects. In this period, it was
a matter of defining boundaries, working out the ways in which a fellowship in Christ could be
distinguished from contemporary Judaism, still in number a far greater movement than Christianity,
and paganism. As the communities established their presence, thoughtful pagans began to express
their concerns. One of these was Celsus.
 INTERLUDE ONE
The Earliest Christian Art
THERE IS NOTHING FROM BEFORE AD 200 WHICH CAN BE RECOGNISED as distinctively Christian art. This is
partly because Christian communities were small and poor but it is possible that traditional Jewish
conventions about portraying images may have inhibited them. Any public display of Christianity
would certainly have invited retaliation. There is, in fact, a canon of the Council of Elvira (c.314)
that specifically forbids the painting of church walls, a stricture still followed by the Donatists in
north Africa as late as the early fourth century. While the baptistery at Dura-Europus is decorated, the
neighbouring meeting hall is not.
Rome is the home of much of the earliest art, which decorates the tombs of the Christian dead in
the catacombs. There are a few other examples scattered around the empire, the frescoes from the
baptistery in Dura-Europus, dating to 240, some sculpture which may have come from a marble tomb
in Asia Minor and fragments of frescoes from Thessalonika and sites in North Africa. Some third
century sarcophagi survive from Gaul where Roman styles have been adapted to Christian themes.
All these, with the rare exception of Dura-Europus, are funerary art.
Catacomb art is usually very rudimentary, rushed and awkward in style, often little more than a
symbolic shape or figures, stamped on to the tomb as a gesture of hope. The sarcophagi, on the other
hand, must have been commissioned by wealthier Christians and their carving is of high quality. In
many cases it is hard to know whether pictures of grapes and vines or sheep are purely decorative, as
they would be in pagan art, or have a Christian meaning. Certainly the vine, associated with the
Eucharist or with Christ himself, easily makes the transition from paganism. Another well-known
Christian symbol is the fish. If one takes the first letters of Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour in
Greek they spell out the Greek ixthus, fish, so the association is very clear. Scenes of fishermen are
common: Clement of Alexandria talks attractively of Christ as the fisher of men, of those saved from
the sea of evil, luring with sweet life the chaste fish from the hostile tide. Fishermen in boats, which
of course suggest the early apostles, also symbolise a link to water and baptism.
The most common figure of all in early Christian art is the Good Shepherd. This was already
known as a pagan symbol but it fitted well with Christian readings (notably the gospel of John). One
of the rare links between art and a text is to be found in the Shepherd of Hermas (c.140) in the vision
of a man of glorious aspect, dressed like a Shepherd, with a white goats skin, a wallet on his
shoulders and a rod in his hand. Another popular image is the orant, a figure, usually female,
standing face front with her hands raised, the traditional representation of the virtue pietas in
classical art. Often an orant is shown alongside the Good Shepherd as a standard Christian tomb
image. Many early Christians would have been converted in schools of philosophy, such as the ones
run by Clement of Alexandria or Origen, so it is not surprising to find images of teachers or
philosophers with their pupils. These presumably drew on real life but the teacher also stands for
Christ. Early hymns link Christ to the sun, the light that contrasts with the darkness, but
representations of Christ as the sun god, Helios, are rare.
Themes from the Old Testament are more common than those from the New, probably because it
was easier to find copies of the Hebrew scriptures to read from when the New Testament was still in
formation. Jonah, thrown up by the whale after three days in darkness, a symbol of the resurrection, is
very popular, as are the Old Testament characters who were rescued by the intervention of God
Noah, or Isaac at the moment of sacrifice. One of the earliest themes from gospel sources is the
raising of Lazarus. Others record Christs miracles but there are no known images of his birth,
Passion or resurrection, all common in later centuries. The hope of salvation and the raising to new
life bind these images together.
By the late third century, on a sarcophagus from Santa Maria Antiqua in Rome, the dead man is
shown as a philosopher among a cluster of what have become common themes. Water flows from the
River Jordan where Christ is shown being baptised. The water runs along the relief reaching a scene
of Jonah being tossed overboard and then reclining on earth after he has been thrown out from the
whale. Meanwhile the dead man is flanked by an orant, probably his wife, and a Good Shepherd.
 CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Celsus Confronts the Christians
THE EARLIEST SYSTEMATIC ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY TO SURVIVE IS On the True Doctrine by Celsus.1
It tells us what educated Greeks found difficult about Christianity. Nothing is known about Celsus
other than what his writings tell us and they give no hint as to where he came from or where he wrote.
They probably date from the 180s much the same period as Irenaeus. Celsus was clearly well
educated in the ideas of his time but he was not a particularly sophisticated thinker. In fact, his
temperament comes across as conservative and he was happy to repeat the religious philosophy of his
day without any critical analysis of it. His work only survives because the great theologian of the
third century, Origen, chose to reply to it and in doing so reproduced some 70 per cent of the original.
So what still exists can be pieced together in a truncated but continuous narrative. In comparison,
other sophisticated attacks on Christianity, notably that by the third-century philosopher Porphyry,
were destroyed altogether by later Christians.
Celsus is a Platonist, typical of his period in believing that there is a Supreme Good or God, who
exists as a transcendent being above all things and beyond all emotions. God is essentially
benevolent: God takes care of the universe; that is to say that providence never abandons it, and it
does not become more evil. All has been made by God so that the world itself may be complete and
perfect in all its parts. God does not need to be worshipped but he has set in place an ordered society
and as such deserves respect. Celsus is adamant that humankind does not have a privileged role in
creation: Things have been proportioned, but not for the sake of man rather for the good of the
universe as a whole. Here Celsus admits to being influenced by the Stoic principle that everything in
the world, material and immaterial, is linked.2 He records how ants appear to operate intelligently:
they set up a stratified society, work hard, punish idlers and even have their own graveyards. There is
an underlying good order to the world which can be appreciated through the use of reason and,
judging from Celsus example of the ants, through observation. Certainly evils exist they are a part
of the nature of matter and of mankind but the amount of evil is constant, as is the amount of good,
and it is extremely difficult to know whether what appears to have an evil effect on one individual
might not have a good one on another.
Just as there is an underlying order to the material world, so should there be a similar order in
human society. Celsus sees reverence for the emperor as complementary to the reverence for God.
Yet, one should not be subservient. Human beings have the power of reason and they should use it:
One ought first to follow reason as a guide before accepting any belief, since anyone who believes
without testing a doctrine is certain to be deceived. Plato, he goes on, accepted that the good could
only be known to a few but he does not ask people to stop questioning or to accept that God is like
such and such. Celsus sums up the relationship between God and intelligence as follows: God is not
mind, intelligence, or knowledge; but he causes the mind to think, and is hence the cause of the
existence of intelligence, the possibility of knowledge.
However, finding the truth is not easy. Celsus is aware of Platos analogy of the cave (from The
Republic) in which individuals growing up inside a cave see only shadows but then have to embark
on a painful journey towards reality, here symbolised by the light of the sun. One of Celsus criticisms
of the Christians is that they bypass this long journey by accepting Jesus too readily as the light.
They spend too much time in the outer world, listening to deceivers and magicians and they place too
great an emphasis on miracles. They [Christians] think one cannot know God except through the
senses of the body. Rather they should be studying the poets and philosophers who have gone beyond
the world of the senses and looked into the inner soul.
It is not clear what made Celsus so fascinated and appalled by the Christians. He had certainly
studied the movement in detail and even read from the gospels. He acknowledges that the Christians
are distinct from society, in that they worship in secret, condemn the pagan gods and are agreed that
they must remain perpetual apostates from the approved religions. He believes that their numbers are
growing and he worries that knowledge of their myths, such as the virgin birth, the crucifixion and the
resurrection, are becoming more widespread than the works of the philosophers. What holds the
Christians together, he suggests, is fear of persecution and the rejection of Judaism but he is also
aware that there have been many forms of Christianity. He cites the Marcionites, the gnostics and
Christians who wanted to go on living by Jewish law. He mentions by name a number of Christian
sects led by women that are recorded nowhere else. He knows of the debates going on within
Christianity although his assertion that Christians, it is needless to say, utterly detest each other is
rather sweeping. His own explanation for the disagreements is that Christian beliefs lack solid
foundation and so disputes are inevitable.
Understandably Celsus has little time for the God of the Old Testament and his criticisms echo
those of the gnostics described earlier. If God is beyond all human emotions and has no human
attributes, as Celsus believes, then a god who moves over the waters, has hands with which to create
and speaks cannot be God. The Christians speak of God being angry, jealous, moved to repentance,
sorry, sleepy, in short, as a being in every respect more a man than a God. Celsus acknowledges
the gnostic view that the Old Testament god was an evil creator god but, in that case, why did the
true God allow him to take charge?
In line with Trypho in Justins Dialogue, Celsus refuses to believe that the Old Testament is filled
with prophecies which foretell Christ. Rather the prophecies seem to tell of a great prince, a leader of
nations, not a low-grade character like Jesus. There are many thousands of others who might qualify
to be the one prophesied. How can one distinguish Jesus from all the other magic workers who can
also expel demons and cure disease?
One of Celsus major concerns is that Jesus is the messenger of a malevolent god. God has already
shown that he can be destructive of his creation Celsus cites the tower of Babel and the destruction
of Sodom and Gomorrah. Now Jesus brings the message that the majority of humankind will suffer
eternal punishment at the judgement with only an elect few being saved. Apart from the objection that
the destruction of the world is hardly worthy of God, Celsus finds the principle that one section of
mankind is elevated above others unsustainable. As has been seen, as a good Stoic he believed in the
unity of matter and one cannot privilege some human beings in this way. He spotted a trend. By the
time of Augustine two hundred years later, Christians were arguing that they had the right to dispose
of the rest of creation as they wished. God created humankind as the superior species and humans had
the right to use animals, which had no souls and lacked the power of rational thought, exactly as they
wanted.
Celsus finds the incarnation of Jesus equally incomprehensible. The Platonists accepted that there
were intermediary figures between God and the material world but Celsus feels that the adulation
given to Jesus is hardly that due to an intermediary Christians speak of him as if he were another
god. In any case, why does God, who is accessible through reason, need to show himself in the form
of a human being? Why does he have to degrade himself by mingling with human flesh? If he were
divine surely he would not have looked just like a human being? It is plainly impossible that a body
containing the essence of divinity itself would be like anyone elses. Even if he did have to appear in
human form why did he wait so late in history to show himself in this way and then in such an out of
the way place? Jesus life does nothing to improve the dignity of God. He allowed himself to be
humiliated as no true god would. He was not recognised as divine in his lifetime even by his own
followers, who failed to maintain their allegiance to him when he was arrested. So the Christians
claim that the arrest and humiliation of Jesus are all the more reason to believe that he was the Son of
God is just perverse to Celsus. The Christians confuse everyone further by claiming that the wisdom
of men is nothing but foolishness with God. This challenges Celsus own approach to intellectual life.
He derides the way in which Christians aim their message at those without wisdom by saying that they
will have the real wisdom if they believe in Christ. Humility is important in that one should not
accept that one can fully understand God, but the Christian form of humility involves little more than
self-abasement, something very different.
Celsus is particularly concerned with the way that Christians have withdrawn from society. He
believes that the rituals of worship and sacrifice that underpin everyday life in the pagan world
cannot simply be disregarded. If Christians wish to participate in society then they should respect the
gods of the society in which they live. It can be compared to living in someone elses property and not
paying rent for it. Their denigration of existing custom and their lack of respect for authority are
equally inexcusable: If everyone were to adopt the Christians attitude, moreover there would be no
rule of law: the legitimate authority would be abandoned; earthly things would return to chaos and
come into the hands of the lawless and savage barbarians; and nothing further would be heard of
Christian worship or of wisdom, anywhere in the world. Indeed for your superstition to exist, the
power of the emperor is necessary. If Celsus was writing in the reign of Commodus (18092), as
seems to be the case, this rings true. Whatever Commodus many other faults, little persecution of
Christians is recorded in his reign.
Celsus goes on to query the power of the Christian God. He notes how Christians will strike
statues of Zeus and Apollo claiming that they will be protected from any retaliation because they are
Christians. Yet, surely, if he, Celsus, struck a statue erected by the Christians there would not be a
reaction either. If the Christian God were a true protector he would not allow Christians to be
persecuted. There is no evidence that there was any retribution for those who crucified Jesus. What
are we to think of a God so negligent that he not only permitted his son to suffer as cruel a death as
thus Jesus did, but who allowed the message he was sent to deliver [probably that of the Second
Coming] to perish with him? The emperor would gain nothing by adopting the Christian God as a
protector of the state because the evidence shows that both Jews and Christians have suffered rather
than prospered under Gods care. Likewise, Christians talk of the great struggle between God and
Satan but why is God not able to overcome the devil?
Celsus resents the way that Christians simply respond to being challenged with bland statements
such as Do not ask questions, just believe and Your faith will save you. He admits that there are
some intelligent Christians who are prepared to see the meaning of Christ in allegorical terms but the
majority are simply credulous. He particularly berates preachers who concentrate their efforts on the
foolish, dishonourable and stupid slaves, women and little children. He claims that when in
private houses they target wool workers, cobblers, laundry workers and the most illiterate country
bumpkins Children are told that they must not believe their own teachers or parents but that they
will only be happy if they believe in Christ. He cannot understand the Christian obsession with
sinners and contrasts Christianity with other mystery religions that aim to recruit among the pure and
righteous.
On the True Doctrine provides a vivid picture of the culture clash between Christianity and
traditional Platonic beliefs in the late second century. Even if Celsus sweeping condemnations may
be somewhat polemical and elitist, he does highlight the difficulty that conventional Greeks and
Romans experienced in understanding Christianity. Many of the issues he discusses were, of course,
being argued about within the Christian communities themselves but Christians continued to offend the
more conservative members of society by their widespread rejection of traditional ritual and their
lack of loyalty to the emperor. Yet as Christianity spread, there was increasing pressure to make
compromises with mainstream society, not least with the rich variety of Greek intellectual life that
Celsus accused them of rejecting.
 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Challenge of Greek Philosophy
AT THE VERY BEGINNING OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY, PAUL LAID DOWN A challenge to the wisdom of the
wise: I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1
Corinthians 2:3). He initiated a negative response to philosophy, especially to the rigour of rational
thought, which has persisted in strong or weak forms throughout Christian history. Yet for the Greeks
the use of rational thought was intrinsic to serious learning and it was precisely the emotional, faith-
centred commitment to Christ that most disturbed them. If Christianity was to attract more highly
educated Greeks it would have to come to some form of reconciliation with classical learning.
At the higher end of the social hierarchy this was one of the best-educated and most intellectually
alive generations ever known, heir to the classical philosophers who had defined most areas of
knowledge from mathematics to science in a form which we still use, and still capable of original
thought. It is impressive that intellectuals, both pagan and Christian, between the second and fourth
centuries, were at home with poets, philosophers, playwrights and historians stretching back to
Homer a thousand years before. Central to higher education was training in rhetoric. This was not
merely an education in how to speak and construct an argument. It took place within a moral
framework. The great classical rhetorician Isocrates (436338 BC) had stressed how easy it was for
rhetoric to become no more than emotional manipulation if the speaker did not observe high standards
in the material he used and the way he used it. The training involved choosing a wide variety of texts
and discussing the moral and historical significance of each. With such an education completed, the
student could now embark on a professional career exploiting all the opportunities where effective
speaking was needed. This included, for Christians, the art of making sermons. Augustine was the city
orator in Milan before he converted to Christianity.
A more rigorous training in philosophy was available for the truly dedicated intellectual. This
involved finding a teacher and joining his school, perhaps for several years. It was often a fruitful
relationship. Students formed lifelong attachments to their teacher and to each other. Not only was the
teacher responsible for their moral welfare (he would dismiss the dissolute), he would often foster
his students in their careers, recommending them for posts in the imperial bureaucracy or in teaching.
After the suppression of pagan thought in the fourth century and the collapse of the western empire in
the fifth, it was to be a thousand years before, in the Renaissance, such a varied, rigorous and
benevolent education was to be available again and even that did not have the breadth in the natural
sciences that the classical world had enjoyed. Perhaps one had to wait until the Encyclopaedists of
the eighteenth century or even the scientific advances of the nineteenth for that to happen.
Most teachers taught within a specific school. Plato (c.429347 BC) remained the most appealing
philosopher. His dialogues were so accessible and the broad tenor of his ideas so easy to grasp that,
in the words of Cicero, everyone, even those who do not accept their teachings or are not
enthusiastic disciples, reads Plato and the rest of the Socratic school. Fundamental to his philosophy
was the contrast between the volatile, changing and emotionally unstable material world and the
changeless world of the Forms or Ideas above. Starting with the mastery of the logic of mathematics
the student began a challenging journey of understanding what these Forms might be. So by
contemplating all the different ways in which courage is manifested in this world, one might
eventually grasp the essence of the Form of Courage which existed in a much more real way in the
immaterial world. The Forms themselves had their own hierarchy so that an ultimate, the Good,
contained all the aspects of good manifested in the Forms below it.
By the second century Platonism had developed so that the Good, or the One took on a life of its
own as a benevolent entity reaching out to the world below, through intermediaries (the lower Forms,
often called daemons (from the Greek daimon)) and being accessible in return through contemplation
and rational thought. In the Handbook of Platonism, for instance, the mid-second-century philosopher
Alcinous argues that, while it is almost impossible to contemplate God (the One), one can think
rationally what God might or might not be, consider the relationships that man has with God so as to
appreciate the reciprocal relationship, of God to man, and use intuition to establish some form of
personal relationship with God. Alcinous concludes that while God is eternal and perfect and above
all created matter, he is responsible for creation in so far as he brought order to an existing disorder
and continues to foster further progress. His creative impulses were put into action by the daemons.
This was a much more metaphysical philosophy than Plato had taught and it is normally known as
Middle Platonism to distinguish it from the original inspiration. The Platonists were wary of the
material world, suspicious of emotion and dismissive of sex and sensuality in general. So good
philosophising and virtuous living went hand in hand.
Aristotle (384322 BC) was a student of Plato and his early works show the influence of his
master but gradually he developed his philosophy in different directions. He came to reject Platos
theory of Forms, or eternal ideas which existed for all time, and which could be grasped, eventually,
by the reasoning mind, in favour of detailed observation of what could be seen in the material world.
At one level this involved the accumulation of empirical facts and reasoned thought on them (he was
the founder of biology and zoology as disciplines) but he was also the acknowledged authority on
logic. His influential Categories contained the fundamental questions that should be asked about any
subject: what is its essence, its qualities and relationships to other objects? In particular he pondered
on the process of change. Fundamental to his thought was the belief that living beings grow towards
the potential unique to their species. Each species has its proper end for human beings that is the
state of eudaimonia, or flourishing. The whole is bound up in a world whose supreme being, the
Unmoved Mover, keeps all the heavenly bodies revolving in perfect harmony. To contemplate the
divine and to appreciate the underlying good order of all things is the highest state of eudaimonia.
Aristotle developed these ideas to include sophisticated works on ethics and politics.
Aristotle faced two problems in this period. The first was that his texts were always difficult to
read, especially in comparison with the dialogues of Plato. They were often no more than lecture
notes and had to be explained by commentators. The second was that his stress on empirical
observation and logic was out of step with the age. His ethics focused on making pragmatic decisions
within a wider context of self-knowledge, the weighing up of moral alternatives and moderation in all
things. For many this involved an unacceptable compromise with the material world and its desires.
This does not mean that there was a lack of scientific advance in this period Galens brilliant use of
logic in medicine, Ptolemys astonishing astronomical models and his pioneering work on geography
make that obvious. There were some important defenders of Aristotle such as the philosopher
Porphyry in the third century but, in general, all-encompassing spiritual solutions were more
attractive to scholars than the dogged and meticulous sorting of facts and the application of reason to
them. It was an age in which there was continual probing of new spiritual opportunities even if, in
general among the elite, there was increasing belief in a single rational force which would not act
perversely.
The Stoics were another influential school. They understood the material world, the cosmos, as
encapsulated within the force of reason, logos. Everything from the divine to human beings, animal
life and the material world was linked to each other in a great cycle of change, birth, flourishing,
death, in a conflagration, and rebirth. Human beings themselves contained a spark of the logos (and it
may have been from the Stoics that the gnostics gained this idea of entrapped gnosis) but it was only
the logos that survived each transformation. The Stoic Chrysippus had provided the fullest
articulation of Stoic thought in the third century BC but there were always difficult questions of logic,
free will and ethics to discuss and Stoics were famous for their readiness to take their philosophy in
new and penetrating directions. They affected to despise wealth and to bear the changing fortunes of
life with dignity. The first-century Stoic Seneca committed suicide rather than endure the tyranny of
Nero, while the Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius doggedly carried out his duties as commander on the
frontiers despite having no background as a soldier. Christians, with their own experience of
steadfastness in the face of persecution, could respond to this. They could also see the conflagration
expected by the Stoics in the awesome descriptions of the Coming of Christ at the Last Judgement.
Had not Jesus said, at Luke 12:49, I have come to set fire to the earth, and how I wish it were
already kindled? The Book of Revelation promised much the same.
There were smaller tributaries that ran into the major rivers of Greek philosophy, adding new
currents or stirring up waves in the mainstream. The more mystical were attracted to the
Pythagoreans, whose school was the oldest of all, having been founded in the late sixth century BC by
Pythagoras who had emigrated from Asia Minor to southern Italy. His followers considered
themselves a religious community dedicated to passing on the wisdom of their founder. In particular
they saw numbers as representing an underlying reality. The Pythagoreans lived ascetically and were
concerned with discovering the patterns and relationships, expressed numerically, of course, which
underpinned the natural world.
The aim of engaging with this lively tradition of competing philosophies was to reach the goal of
all education, paideia, excellence in behaviour through the process of a training in rational thought.
Christians might seem a world apart from this elite community but by the middle of the second century
we find the first Christians to have converted after rejecting a traditional education in philosophy.
Tatian, the author of the Diatessaron, talks of himself, in his Address to the Greeks, as he who
philosophises in the manner of barbarians, born in the land of the Assyrians, educated first in your
principles, secondly in what I now profess. In other words, despite being an Assyrian (it is not
quite clear what he means by this), he has acquired a Greek education but abandoned it for the
barbarian philosophy of Christianity. Christianity, he tells us, is superior because Christians behave
better than philosophers do. He gives examples of the philosophers vain boasting, gluttony, elitist
prejudices (here Aristotle is cited) and other dissolute or devious behaviour. Moreover, he claims,
they are endlessly fighting among themselves. Wherefore, he warns, be not led away by the solemn
assemblies of philosophers who are no philosophers, who dogmatise one against the other, though
each one vents but the crude fancies of the moment. The Christians, in contrast, Tatian argues,
worship one all-powerful God and do not need to dispute between themselves.
This was hardly a philosophical retort. In particular, Tatian failed to appreciate that it is through
such disputations that progress in philosophy is made. More measured is an account from Justin
Martyr of his experiences with the pagan philosophers before he found Christ. He describes how he
moves from school to school, dissatisfied by each philosophy until a wise man introduces him to
Christ. One of the reasons Justin gives for his conversion is his belief that the prophets had the truth
and it was the Greeks who had acquired it but then lost it by splitting up into warring groups. He
claims that Moses had passed on information about the creation of the universe to Plato who had
reproduced it in his Timaeus. (There is an echo here of Philos Who is Plato but Moses speaking
Greek?) Justin goes on to claim that Christ was the Word (logos) and those who accepted the logos
in the days before Christ were, in fact, honorary Christians. He includes Socrates among them. This
was an important development in that it was now possible for Christians to argue that the insights they
might find in pagan philosophers had been planted there by the prophets and were not to be rejected.
Nevertheless there remained many Christians who were deeply distrustful of pagan philosophy.
One of its most determined opponents was Tertullian. Very little is known about this doughty
traditionalist. He was born in Africa in about 160, apparently the son of a centurion, and spent most
of his life in Carthage. He converted to Christianity in middle age he began writing his Christian
tracts in about 195 and then after 205 drifted towards Montanism. He seems to have died at a great
age, perhaps as late as 240. He is important as the first major Christian writer who composed in both
Latin and Greek and who coined many Latin words, such as trinitas. His colourful rhetoric, his
uncompromising stand on morals and his defence of faith make him an interesting if somewhat
unsettling figure. He would shock the more conventional by his subversive statements such as this
from De carne christi: The Son of God was born: there is no shame, because it is shameful. And the
Son of God died: it is wholly credible, because it is ridiculous. And, buried, He rose again: it is
certain, because impossible. So faith was often more important than reason with the result that his
attitude towards pagan philosophy was dismissive. It is the philosophers who were the channel
through which heresy infiltrated and corrupted Christianity.
Tertullian lays out his case in Chapter Seven of his Praescriptio haereticorum, the Prescription
against the Heretics. Every heresy has its roots in a school of pagan philosophy. For instance, he
argues that the idea of the aeons, so beloved of the gnostics such as Valentinus, comes straight from
Plato, who, as we have seen, did indeed teach of intermediaries. Where else did Marcion find his
heretical idea that a supreme god reigned above the creator god of the Old Testament but from the
Stoics? Those heretics who talk of the death of the soul have taken this from the Epicureans, who
deny the existence of the gods, while all the philosophers deny the resurrection of the body, a doctrine
to which Tertullian was strongly committed. Tertullian has a particular hatred of Aristotle: Unhappy
Aristotle! who invented for these men dialectics, the art of building up and pulling down; an art so
evasive in its propositions, so far-fetched in its conjectures, so harsh in its arguments, so productive
of contentions embarrassing even to itself, retracting everything, and really treating of nothing!
Tertullian continues with a peroration that encapsulates his rejection of all pagan philosophy. What
indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between [Platos] Academy and the
Church? What between heretics and Christians Away with all attempts to produce a mottled
Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition! We want no curious disputation after
possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after enjoying the gospel! With our faith, we desire no further
belief. For this is our primary faith, that there is nothing which we ought to believe besides.
Tertullian marks an extreme, a contemptuous rejection of the possibilities of a rational
underpinning for what is held in faith. For those with broader minds, on the other hand, it was
apparent that there were possible bridges between Christianity and philosophy. The tenor of Greek
philosophy, whether its roots were Platonic, Aristotelian or Stoic, was towards one supreme god,
even though the changeless God of the Platonists, the Unmoved Mover of Aristotle and the logos of
the Stoics seemed to have little in common with the emotionally charged god of the Old Testament.
Nevertheless Philo, and following him Justin, had already tried to relate Judaism to Platonism and
this foundation could be built on.
One connection between Platonists and Christians was established through Platos text the
Timaeus. Here Plato dealt with the problem of the creation of the world. He imagined a divine
craftsman, the demiurge, who made an orderly world out of a previous confusion: Desiring that all
things should be good he took in hand all that was visible, which was not at rest but in discordant
and disorderly motion, and brought it from its disorder into order. This could be reconciled with the
account in Genesis: And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the
deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Justin Martyr complained in his First
Apology that Christians were being persecuted when they were actually agreeing with Plato in
claiming that all things have been produced and arranged into a world by God. Again Platos God,
being generous, desired that all things should become as like as might be to himself that all things
should be good might be equated with God saw that all he had made was good, again from
Genesis. Yet it was unclear from the Timaeus whether the world came into being as a direct creative
act or had existed eternally in disorder (so that the demiurge simply brought it into order). Most
Platonists did not worry much they just assumed that the material world was of divine origin but
others argued that it had existed eternally in disorder until the creation. Many early Christians were
quite happy to agree. As Justin put it, God in his goodness created everything from formless matter
(1 Apology 10.2).
An alternative approach, first seen in the works of the second-century Alexandrian Basilides,
suggested an act of creation ex nihilo, from nothing. The possibility of nothingness always
perplexed the Greeks but the idea of creation ex nihilo was later taken up by Theophilus of Antioch
who challenged Plato on the grounds that if matter had existed for eternity then it would also be
divine and that Gods power was diminished if his act of creation involved no more than the bringing
of order. The reality of his power was shown in his ability to make whatever he wished out of what
did not exist. Theophilus interpreted the first verses of Genesis to support his case. Here he was
followed by Irenaeus who, in his campaign against gnostics, wished to avoid any suggestion that the
demiurge was a lesser form of god. Irenaeus argued that God of the Old Testament had the will to do
whatever he wanted and he did not need any matter from outside himself to do so. Creation ex nihilo
became orthodox Christian doctrine but this does not seem to have diminished the status of the
Timaeus. In early medieval Europe, when most works of classical philosophy had been forgotten, it
was the only work of Plato that was still known.1
Two other facets of Platonism were to prove especially important in the debates to come. Plato
had written extensively on the soul. It was the most noble part of a human being, even if held in
bondage by the human body and its desires. In Socrates meditation on his coming death as recounted
by Plato in the Phaedo, Socrates is convinced death is not to be feared because the well-disciplined
soul lives eternally. Plato went further and argued that the soul of each individual existed before birth
and this could be proved by the way it recollected the fruits of reason. Crucially the soul could be
developed during life by strengthening ones powers of thought and this in its turn meant living an
ethical life. For many Christian thinkers this equated with the hope that the soul might reach such a
state of perfection that it would be united with God in heaven. Origen follows Plato closely in arguing
that the soul existed before its arrival in a human body and that this body was a temporary and
degrading home from which it might escape through its own efforts. Other writers, Irenaeus, for
instance, again anxious not to diminish the power of the Old Testament God, disagreed and claimed
that the soul was totally dependent on the will of God for its continuing existence. There remained
intense debate within Christianity over whether the body rose with the soul and if so when and in
what form, its real one as seen on earth or an idealised, spiritual, one.
The second significant facet of Platonism was the relationship between Platos intermediaries and
Christ. As we have seen, the term logos was used widely in pagan philosophy and had already been
adopted by Philo to refer to an ambassador from God. Whether John in his gospel took this
conception directly from Philo or not, Christians were by now used to the idea of logos becoming
flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. The question that had to be explored was whether there were other
intermediaries, on the lines suggested by Plato, other quasi-divine Forms that emanated from God.
Christians could certainly think of some from their scriptures, notably the Holy Spirit which was seen
as a distinct divine entity with its own sphere of activity. Then there were the angels, as in the case of
Gabriel who arrived to tell Mary of the coming of Christ. Of course, all these intermediaries were the
servants of God, sent by him to carry out his desires. Where did Christ fit alongside the other
intermediaries? The dominant belief until the early fourth century was that he was a form of superior
intermediary, still subordinate to God but above the Holy Spirit and the angels. This was to be
dramatically challenged in the fourth century by an alternative view that broke with this Platonic and
scriptural inheritance by claiming that Jesus and the Father were of one substance.
Clement of Alexandria, a Christian who was deeply sympathetic to pagan philosophy, provides an
insight into these issues.2 Clement had been born in Athens of pagan parents in about 160 and arrived
in Alexandria, the other great centre of Greek intellectual life, in search of further education. He
attended the school of a Christian, Pantaenus, and eventually became its leader. When a bout of
persecution broke out in Alexandria in the reign of the emperor Septimius Severus in 2023, Clement
fled into exile and died sometime before 215. His works show that he was widely read across the
whole range of Greek literature and philosophy. In his most famous work, the rambling Stromateis, or
Patchwork, Clement tells us that philosophy is a sort of preliminary discipline for those who lived
before the coming of Christ and adds, Perhaps we may say it was given to the Greeks with this
special object; for philosophy was to the Greeks what the law was to the Jews a schoolmaster to
bring them to Christ. Now, of course, in the Christian era, progress is possible: That which the chief
of philosophy only guessed at, the disciples of Christ have both apprehended and proclaimed. The
philosophers had only perceived a slender spark of Christian knowledge; now this was capable of
being fanned into flame. In contrast to his contemporary, Tertullian, Clement sees pagan philosophy as
an essential part of Christian education.
Clement is the first Christian to name Philo as an inspiration and he follows Philo in using both the
scriptures and Platonism as the sources for his own theology. Clement follows the Platonists of his
day in seeing God/the Good as sending forth the Forms which share a common relationship to each
other but which reflect back to him. Jesus is and here Clement follows John the logos, which is
bound into this reciprocal relationship with God but is also accessible to humanity in a way God
himself could never be. An important issue that Clement addresses is the relationship between faith
and knowledge.
Faith, pistis in Greek, is a complex term and Clement acknowledges the different ways in which it
could be used. It might provide the starting point for reasoned judgement or a form of perception or
something that could be anticipated. Without faith one could never begin the journey to knowledge.
One of Clements favourite verses from the scriptures was, and here Augustine was to follow him,
translating from the Septuagint version of lsaiah 7:9, Unless you believe, you will not understand.
Baptism was crucial in opening up a new phase of intellectual life: notably it allowed the reception
of knowledge from above. As Clement puts it in his Paedagogus, The Instructor, we who are
baptised, having wiped off the sins which obscure the light of the Divine Spirit, have the eye of the
spirit free, unimpeded, and full of light, by which alone we contemplate the Divine, the Holy Spirit
flowing down to us from above. Once you have your core of faith then you can proceed either by
logic or spiritual intuition to knowledge. Clement distinguishes between the true gnostic, the one
who really has mastered the deepest truths, using reason when it is possible to do so, and the false
gnostic who is easy to recognise because he does not use reason and lacks a wider intellectual vision.
Crucial to Clements theology was his belief that all Christians must progress towards greater
virtue, which he saw as the ultimate expression of God. The nature of virtue could be grasped through
reason. This was certainly a Platonic approach but while Plato had talked in The Republic of those
trapped in the cave learning to live in the light of the sun, Clement substituted Christ for the sun it
was Christ, the light of the world, who had turned sunset into sunrise. This is typical of the effective
way that Clement adapted philosophy into a Christian mould, using his two most important mentors,
John and Paul, in support of his cause. The description of Jesus as the light of the world derives, of
course, from Johns gospel.
Clements moderate approach and his thoughtful advocacy of faith based on reason compares well
with the more frenzied denunciations of other church fathers. He is optimistic about the possibility of
Christians finding God. The virtuous Christian might even reach divine status if he imitates Christ:
He who listens to the Lord, and follows the prophecy given by Him, will be formed perfectly in the
likeness of the teacher made a god going about in flesh. The drag of original sin which, according
to Augustine, destroyed any hope of salvation unless God chose to intervene, is not for Clement. He
gives advice on sexual behaviour, certainly with a sober insistence on continence, but without the
active distaste for sexuality that Paul and many of his followers expressed. He scorns those who offer
themselves for martyrdom they should be seen as guilty of their own deaths: He who kills a man of
God sins against God, he also who presents himself before the judgement-seat becomes guilty of his
death. And such is also the case with him who does not avoid persecution, but out of daring presents
himself for capture. Such a one, as far as in him lies, becomes an accomplice in the crime of the
persecutor.
Clement and Tertullian stand at opposite poles in their accepting and rejecting attitudes to Greek
philosophy. Each point of view, one from Greek-speaking Alexandria and one from Latin-speaking
Carthage, represents a response to pagan society. The conflicting beliefs over the nature of God, the
supreme benign force of the Platonists or the emotional and often vituperative god of the Old
Testament, seem irreconcilable. The two approaches represent two very different psychologies and it
is perhaps too easy to idealise one, the intellectual openness of Clement, as against the merciless
intolerance of the other. They could live together for the time being because there was as yet no
framework that could impose consensus, yet the warnings were there for the future. While a secure
intellectual base for Christian theology was needed, it was going to be immensely difficult to find.
 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Origen and Early Christian Scholarship
THERE COULD HAVE BEEN FEW BACKDROPS MORE CONDUCIVE TO intellectual creativity than the great
city of Alexandria. Founded by Alexander in 332 BC, Alexandria flourished as the major port of the
eastern Mediterranean, its lighthouse one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The Ptolemies, the
Greek dynasty that succeeded Alexander, had been major patrons of culture and the city soon became
the leading centre in the Greek world for science and mathematics. The library was the most
impressive in the world even if its ambition of having a copy of every single Greek text was never
realised, while the Mouseion, the place of the Muses, acted as a meeting place for scholars. The
Mouseion was ridiculed by some as no more than a talking shop for intellectuals but the Romans
sustained it after they had incorporated Egypt into the empire in 30 BC and the accredited scholars
still enjoyed tax exemptions and free meals. The astronomer Ptolemy spent most of his life there in the
second century working on his studies of the stars and the natural world. The city was, of course,
embellished with fine buildings. A massive temple, the Serapeion, dedicated to the Egyptian god
Serapis, stood on Alexandrias highest hill. For many it was the most impressive shrine in the entire
eastern Mediterranean. While he was growing up, Origen, the subject of this chapter, would have
seen it being rebuilt in an even grander form. No less impressive was the Caesareum, alongside the
harbour. Built in honour of Julius Caesar by his lover Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemies, this temple
was the seat of the Roman imperial cult and in the fourth century was to become the citys Christian
cathedral.
As with any prosperous and prestigious port, Alexandria had a vibrant mix of cultures. The Greeks
were dominant but there was also one of the largest communities of Jews in the Mediterranean as
well as a busy quarter of native Egyptian weavers. Sometimes tensions boiled over: there were riots
in AD 11517 that targeted Jews, and others against Christians in 248; Alexandria had the reputation
of being a violent city. However, for much of the time the population lived together in relative peace
and there was some mingling of intellectuals from the different communities. The Jew Philos respect
for Greek culture and philosophy has already been discussed and Philos brother Alexander was a
close friend of the scholarly emperor Claudius. The brilliant gnostic Valentinus had come from
Alexandria. In the third century, the links between Christian and pagan intellectuals remained close as
we have already seen in the life of Clement. This was a city where a tradition of tolerant debate made
it possible for Christians to use philosophy creatively and Origen was foremost among them.
To many Christians of the third and fourth centuries, Origen was an intellectual hero. The scholarly
Gregory of Nazianzus believed he was the greatest mind in Christian history; Eusebius of Caesarea,
the biographer of Constantine, gave him a central place in his History of the Church and Jerome
described him in his Famous Men as an immortal genius, the greatest teacher of the Church since the
apostles. Like Clement, Origen was an Alexandrian and some reports, now disputed, suggested he
might have been Clements pupil. He was born in about 184, the son of Christian parents. His father
was martyred but had already put in place for his son a broad education in both the scriptures and
philosophy. By the age of seventeen Origen was the leading teacher of a school of Christian
catechism. Until the late 240s there was comparatively little persecution of Christians in the empire
so for most of his life Origen was able to write freely and to watch a church growing in numbers and
stature around him. He is even known to have corresponded with the emperor Philip the Arab who
was sympathetic to Christianity. Origen also travelled widely he was in Rome about 216, in
Antioch between 231 and 232 and in Athens in 233 and 245. In about 231, when he was already
famous in Alexandria, he moved to Caesarea in Palestine. The bishop of Alexandria appears to have
resented his growing status. It was in Caesarea that his excellent library remained for later
generations to exploit. He never rose high in the church hierarchy, although he was eventually
ordained as a presbyter in Caesarea. He was tortured in the persecutions initiated by the emperor
Decius and died in 254.
There is a legend that, troubled by sexuality as a young man, Origen castrated himself. Certainly he
was ascetic by temperament but not obsessively so. He offended the more austere by saying that
divorced couples should be able to remarry, as this was better than the alternatives. There is none of
the polemic in his writings such as that found in the works of Tertullian and Jerome. He lived under
the shadow of martyrdom and was not afraid of it but, like Clement, he did not believe it should be
actively sought out, not least because those who wish to secure the salvation of sinners should never
tempt others to commit a crime. Yet he expected dedication from his fellow Christians and ridiculed
those bishops who were taking advantage of their position to build up personal wealth (he gives
examples of bishops bequeathing church lands to their relatives) or social contacts. The more
effective bishops were by now skilled networkers and they could often do much, in the traditional
role of patron, to help the poorer members of their congregations with tax or law cases. Yet this gave
them a social status that Origen believed many were exploiting for their own benefit. He was also
dismissive of those Christians who still attended the local synagogues or the theatre.
Origen was a brilliant and much-loved teacher. A panegyric to him survives by one of his pupils,
Gregory the Wonderworker. Gregory not only praises Origens sweetness of temperament but
applauds the breadth of his curriculum. Reading was expected to be wide and Gregory goes on to
note that Origen excluded nothing except works of atheists (by whom he meant the Epicureans).
Geometry he presented lucidly as the immutable groundwork and secure foundation of all and,
through astronomy, he lifted us up to the things that are highest above us, while he made heaven
passable to us by the help of each of these sciences, as though they were ladders reaching the skies.
These served as an introduction to the higher levels of philosophy that were orientated towards the
understanding of God. For he asserted further that there could be no genuine piety towards the Lord
of all in the man who despised this gift of philosophy, a gift which man alone of all the creatures of
the earth has been deemed honourable and worthy enough to possess, and one which every man
whatsoever, be he wise or be he ignorant, reasonably embraces, who has not utterly lost the power of
thought by some mad distraction of mind.
Origen responded with his own praise for Gregory. Your natural abilities enable you to be made
an esteemed Roman lawyer or a Greek philosopher of one of the most notable schools. But I hoped
that you would entirely apply your ability to Christianity. Indeed, in order to bring this about, I beg of
you to take from your studies of Hellenic philosophy those things such as can be made encyclic or
preparatory studies of Christianity apply the things that are useful from geometry and astronomy to
the explanation of the Holy Scriptures. The close relationship between philosophy and Christian
belief is well put. The idea that one should move through pagan philosophy into Christianity was to
survive in Christian circles until the Christian emperors of the late fourth century began to suppress
paganism.
Origen was a prolific writer. A patron, Ambrosius, was good enough to provide him with an army
of scribes so that he could produce works and copies of them at high speed. It is estimated that he
wrote some thousand different texts, although most of the library that was preserved at Caesarea
disappeared after he was declared heretical by the emperor Justinian in the sixth century. Of the
hundred of Origens letters known to Eusebius a century later, only three survive. Fragments remain of
the massive commentaries Origen wrote on the books of the Bible, especially his Commentary on
John, the gospel to which he, as a philosopher, was most naturally drawn. The fullest statement of his
beliefs, De principiis, On the First Principles, is largely known from a Latin translation by Rufinus
made in the 380s. By this time Origens creative theology was beginning to offend the church
authorities and Rufinus glossed over difficult passages (with the assertion that a heretic had inserted
them later!) so it is not complete.
At the beginning of De principiis, Origen sets out his commitment to Christ: All who believe and
are assured that grace and truth were obtained through Jesus Christ, and who know Christ to be the
truth, agreeably to His own declaration, I am the truth, derive the knowledge which incites men to a
good and happy life from no other source than from the very words and teaching of Christ. He
accepts that the teaching of Christ has been passed down accurately through the apostles. He then lists
some essential beliefs which were now accepted by the church: that there is one God, that Jesus
Christ had been sent by him and that the Holy Spirit is equal in honour and dignity to Father and Son.
The scriptures had been written through the Spirit of God. Origen agreed that the world had been
created by God, rather than just brought into being from an existing formless mass (here he broke with
the Platonists as he was always prepared to do if his commitment to Christ demanded it). He believed
that souls survived after death when they would be subject to reward and punishment. Outside this
tradition he felt free to speculate and, as much of Christian theology was still in flux, it was here that
his brilliance was given full sway.
First and foremost Origen was a major commentator on the scriptures. The Septuagint was the text
that Christians should read but Origen felt that it could be improved by comparison with the original
Hebrew and other translations. It is also possible that he was concerned by the continuing vitality of
the Jewish community in Alexandria and felt that Christian theologians needed to have access to a
version that was as close as possible to the original Hebrew in order to combat them in debate. So he
embarked on one of the greatest works of scholarship of the era, the Hexapla.1 He accumulated a
series of texts of the Old Testament in the original Hebrew, a transliteration of this in Greek letters
and four Greek translations including the Septuagint and a very literal translation made by one Aquila.
He put them alongside each other in order to study them and comment on the variations. His Hebrew
was not advanced and so he must have had some help. It was a mammoth undertaking, requiring large
quantities of parchment and an extraordinary dedication to getting it all in order. It remained the most
sophisticated research tool for biblical criticism for centuries afterwards. A few fragments of copies
have survived.
Next Origen had to define a framework for the interpretation of the scriptures. Were they the literal
word of God or should one search for deeper spiritual meanings? Origen had no doubt that the text of
the Bible was divinely inspired, by the Holy Spirit, but his instinct was always to look behind the
literal interpretation. His education in the pagan classics would have introduced him to similar
approaches to Homer and other ancient authors and he knew too that he had to offer interpretations
which did not invite ridicule from those used to more sophisticated texts. (This may sound
condescending but when Augustine first read the scriptures he considered them barbaric in
comparison to the classical works he had been used to.) In so far as the main aim of the Old
Testament was to prophesy the coming of Christ, the focus had to be on the understanding of how each
passage did this. This required commitment and the correct spiritual approach, otherwise
misinterpretations were possible: Thorns grow in the hand of a drunkard as Origen put it, quoting
Proverbs (26:4). The more troublesome of the texts, those referring to the wrath of God, for instance,
he believed had been deliberately placed to deter those who were prepared to approach the
scriptures without the required spiritual commitment to their study. He berated those such as Marcion
who read the Old Testament in such a way as to suggest that God was evil.
When he began the exegesis of a text, Origen read it literally and often provided a wealth of
background information to explain the original context. His breadth of learning was extraordinary. He
used medical ideas from Galen and Hippocrates, drew information on the natural world from the
Greek scientists, acquired details of Jewish practice and ceremony from Jews: he even went in
search himself for the original Bethany, the site of the resurrection of Lazarus. His approach here is
that of the Platonist. One examines the material world, which is a pale imitation of the real world
beyond, so as to grasp the nature of that world more fully. So the literal interpretation is the stepping
stone to the spiritual. When Moses comes down from Mount Sinai with his face covered with a veil,
this symbolises the veil that hides the true meaning of the scriptures from the Jews. While the story of
Jonah spending three days in the whale might be true, it is an allegory of the three days that Christ
will spend in hell before the resurrection. The famous Song of Songs may appear to be about the love
of Solomon for his bride but for Christians its allegorical meaning is of the relationship of Christ with
his church or the individual believer. The bride stands for the soul.
This allegorical approach allowed Origen to explain away the contradictions encountered by
anyone attempting a literal interpretation of the Bible. If one takes Johns gospel, for instance, one
finds Jesus confronting the moneylenders in the Temple at the beginning of his ministry while the other
evangelists place it at the end. So a literal interpretation of the gospel texts would result in a
contradiction in the historical sequence. Origen suggests that John has changed the sequence
deliberately so as to make a spiritual point. So it is a spiritual truth in historical falsehood and
acceptable as such. Often his imagination soars. When discussing the Second Coming, Irenaeus had
argued that it would happen as predicted with Christ actually reappearing on earth. Origen thought
that it could be believed in a very different form, either as the extension of the gospel to all parts of
the world or in the mystical sense of the coming of the logos to the human mind so that it could
illuminate the meaning of scripture. Such an approach was useful in confronting Marcion and the
gnostics. One could simply argue that, unworthy as they were, they had missed the real meaning of the
text.
While Origen must be seen as the first major Christian exegesist, and one of the greatest in terms of
the thoroughness and profundity of his work, his approach presents problems. He leaves no place for
any human input into the Bible. It is as if the Holy Spirit, rather than the writer of the text, has worked
relentlessly to use every word for a spiritual purpose. Origen gives a spiritual meaning even to the
containers in which the sacrificial meat is cooked in Leviticus. Many of his interpretations, those on
the Second Coming, for instance, appear arbitrary. It is as if Origen knows the end point that, as a
committed Christian, he is aiming for and develops his interpretation to suit it. This is a fair criticism
(and it can be made of many theologians), yet what is remarkable about Origen is that he recognises
that his own understandings can only be provisional. In the beginning of De principiis he defines the
search for truth as an individual quest: Everyone [ sic], therefore, must make use of elements and
foundations of this sort, according to the precept, Enlighten yourselves with the light of knowledge,
if he would desire to form a connected series and body of truths agreeably to the reason of all these
things, that by clear and necessary statements he may ascertain the truth regarding each individual
topic either those which he has discovered in holy Scripture, or which he has deduced by closely
tracing out the consequences and following a correct method. This is a healthy approach in that it
allows discussion to continue, an essential requirement if any progress in exegesis is to be made.
Origens most interesting studies focus on the relationship between man and God and the specific
role of Christ in that relationship. God is essentially a Platonic god and Origen follows many
Christians in preferring the emotionless figure that transcends all to the emotional God of the Old
Testament (whose human attributes have to be explained away through allegory). At the beginning of
time and here Origen borrows from his compatriot, Philo God created a large but limited
number of souls. As the name he gave them, logica, suggests, they were endowed with reason and
free will. The freedom of the individual was a crucial part of Origens theology if God himself had
the freedom to do whatever he willed, so too did those who were his immediate creation. Yet therein
lay the problem. The souls could use their freedom either to stay close to God or to move away from
him. Those who stayed close were fulfilling what God hoped of them, eternal contemplation of
himself, and might appear as angels or stars. Those who moved further away faced deterioration.
They were transformed from the fine ethereal and invisible body (of the angels) to something much
coarser, the human body. The material world was not evil for Origen; it was a springboard from
which an ascent back to God could take place. God had provided the demands and tribulations of
everyday life as an incentive for escape. Origen was positive here in that he believed that the
goodness of God would act as an attractive force. For although, in the diseases and wounds of the
body, there are some which no medical skill can cure, yet we hold that in the mind there is no evil so
strong that it may not be overcome by the Supreme Word and God. In contrast the Platonists believed
that any ascent to a higher state of understanding had to be entirely through ones own efforts.
So where did Christ fit in? Origen believed that one soul remained so close to God as to retain its
full spirituality. This was Christ and he was sent in human form to earth to show the possibilities of
spiritual completeness. The incarnation remained a mystery to Origen. Of all the marvellous and
splendid things about him [Christ], there is one that utterly transcends the capacity of our weak mortal
intelligence to think of or understand, namely how this mighty power of the divine majesty, the very
word of the Father and the very Wisdom of God can be believed to have existed within the
compass of that man who appeared in Judaea. He had to find a compromise. Christ was distinct from
those souls trapped in a human body in that he had no erotic urges and did not need to excrete. His
mind remained embedded in divinity. However, this left a problem that was to haunt later Christians,
whether this Christ could suffer on the cross. If not, was this an act of salvation at all? Despite his
lack of understanding of the incarnation, Origen believed that Christs coming to earth brought about a
profound revolution for those prepared to recognise his coming and the impact it should have on their
whole being. What does it profit me to say that Christ has come to earth only in the flesh He received
from Mary, if I do not also show that he has also come in my flesh?
Origen meditated deeply on the problem of how the soul might exist after death. Like the Platonists
and many other Christians of his day, he could not see how the material body could ascend with the
soul. Paul had after all made it clear that the body is raised as a spiritual body. Because, argued
Origen, if they believe the apostle [Paul], that a body which arises in glory, and power, and
incorruptibility, has already become spiritual, it appears absurd and contrary to his meaning to say
that it can again be entangled with the passions of flesh and blood, seeing the apostle manifestly
declares that flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God, nor shall corruption inherit
incorruption. Instead Origen suggested that the body of a risen soul, such as it was, would reflect the
new environment it was entering. He took the sea as an analogy. If a body needed to live under water,
it would have to develop gills and other fishy things. There would be similar adaptations if the body
were to survive in the immaterial world. One possible model is the transformed body in which Moses
and Elijah appeared with Jesus at the Transfiguration. Yet, despite the changes, the body would not
lose its identity. An analogy might be made with an individuals genetic code. This maintains its
distinct identity whatever changes takes place in its material form. This sophisticated idea of a body
in flux which can maintain its own identity within different worlds avoids many of the problems
encountered by those who preached that it would be the actual body of the deceased that would be
reconstituted.2
When he considered the nature of God, Origen could not see him as anything but loving. He
refused to believe in evil as a dark force, an entity in itself. It could better be seen as a withdrawal
from goodness. As human beings have free will, any evil act is a deliberate act of will. God is not by
nature punitive it is human beings who bring judgement on themselves and so it is possible for
anyone to be saved from eternal hell fire. Imaginatively Origen stretched this concept to include
Satan. Even the will of the devil to do evil could be thwarted by the power of God. Furthermore, how
could ordinary human beings, mere mortals, thwart God so completely that the latter really has no
option but to punish them for eternity? An eternal hell would be, in effect, a symbol of Gods
impotence and this could hardly be believed. It was on this issue that Origen broke with the bishop of
Alexandria, Demetrius (who believed in eternity of hell) and it may have been the catalyst for his
departure for Caesarea. It is known that Demetrius reacted with fury to the news that Origen had been
ordained there.
Origen also did important work on the Trinity. He was influenced by a Neopythagorean
philosopher, Numenius of Apamea (fl. AD 15076), who had conceived of a second God proceeding
from the One. This analogy could be applied to Christ who proceeded from the Father in a similar
way. No one could equal God, who was above all things. The God and Father, who holds the
universe together, is superior to every being that exists, for he imparts to each one from his own
existence that which each one is; the Son being less than the Father, is superior to rational creatures
alone (for he is second to the Father); the Holy Spirit is still less, and dwells within the saints alone.
The Fathers power is universal, the Sons power is equal to that of the rational creatures of whom he
is one (even if the only one to enjoy perfection) and the Spirits power extends to those souls that
have achieved salvation. The Trinity is therefore a hierarchy and this accords well with the scriptures
where a mass of texts supports the concept of Jesus subordination to the Father. Until 300 this
reflected the mainstream teaching of the church even if the nature of the subordination of Jesus and the
Holy Spirit was impossible to define with any clarity.
Origen was not a polemicist by instinct it was simply not in his nature to indulge in the vicious
attacks on heretics and schismatics that many of his fellow church fathers revelled in. Nevertheless
his patron Ambrosius was successful in persuading him that he should refute the powerful assault on
Christianity by Celsus. Contra Celsum is a long and detailed work in which Origen shows
considerable ingenuity in taking each of Celsus points and refuting them. The response is heavily
rooted in scripture. He [Celsus] wilfully sets aside, I know not why, the strongest evidence in
confirmation of the claims of Jesus, viz., that His coming was predicted by the Jewish prophets.
Origen berates Celsus for failing to understand the sophistication and antiquity of Jewish civilisation,
citing Josephus History as his source. The prophecies are clear for all to see and much of Contra
Celsum relies on quotations from the scriptures to show that the life, death and resurrection of Christ
were all foretold and came to be. The fact that the apostles risked their lives for their belief in a
resurrected Christ is evidence enough that they had genuinely seen it. Contra celsum is an impressive
work and added to the Apologies of Justin and Tertullian shows that Christians were now prepared to
make sophisticated defences of their beliefs.
Origen offers a model of Christian scholarship that is open to learning across the spectrum of
disciplines. He could see how breadth of learning could help achieve a greater understanding of God
and Christ. He is overwhelmingly positive about the goodness of God. God wills those souls who
have fallen into the material world to make the ascent back to him. Origen had the courage to interpret
scripture in imaginative and original ways. Of course, he had opposition from those who lacked his
optimism and intellectual brilliance and he could be exasperated by it. The stupidity of some
Christians is heavier than the sands of the sea, was one response. He was, and knew himself to be, a
member of an elite.
As a more authoritarian Christianity developed in the next century, Origens optimistic ethos came
under scrutiny. The pre-existence of souls, the subordination of Jesus to God the Father, his belief in
the limited nature of hell, all aroused suspicion. It was one of the paradoxes of Christian history that
as Christians came to live in greater freedom, their own perception of the power of God became more
pessimistic. The unceasing attacks of the barbarians and the disintegration of social order in the third
and fourth centuries may have been partly responsible for this but a different tone was contributed by
the Latin-speaking church which was now becoming established. By the time of its spokesman
Augustine a hundred and fifty years later, all humankind was suffering divine displeasure for the sin
of Adam and eternal hell was fully deserved by most. This was a completely different approach to
that of Origen and by the sixth century he was officially declared to be heretical. It was a tragic fate
for one of the finest Christian theologians to have lived.
 CHAPTER NINETEEN
New Beginnings
THE EMERGENCE OF A LATIN CHRISTIANITY

WHILE ALEXANDRIA WAS THE LARGEST CITY OF THE EASTERN Mediterranean, Carthage, capital of the
Roman province of Africa was, after Rome, the largest city in the west. Capital of the old
Carthaginian empire which had been humiliated and destroyed by the Romans in the third and second
centuries AD, it had been revived as a Roman colony and its port was the link between the
increasingly grain-rich provinces of the African mainland and the hungry masses in Rome. Some two-
thirds of Romes grain came from Africa by the first century AD. With the original Carthage razed to
the ground, the city re-emerged as the quintessential planned Roman colony, the Romans acting as an
elite ruling over the native population. A vast civic centre had been built and the city planned around
it. The circus (for chariot racing) was one of the largest in the empire and there was an immense bath
complex, second, at the time of its construction, only to that built by the emperor Nero in Rome.
Gradually the local Punic speakers were being absorbed into Roman life as was typical in Roman
cities of the west where the integration of local native elites was encouraged.
Christianity was introduced to the city by Greek traders and it is not until after 180 that the very
first references to Latin-speaking Christians appear. These accounts are of martyrdoms of which the
most celebrated was the death of Perpetua in the city. Certainly it was a harsh city for Christians to
survive in and there is a rigour and austerity to Christian life there which conflict with the more
relaxed attitudes of the Greeks. Christians from the native population may have brought with them
attitudes from the worship of the Punic gods Baal and Tanit, implacable deities who welcomed human
sacrifice. Tertullian is typical of the Roman Christians of this period in his obsession with discipline,
heretics and rigid adherence to a rule of faith.
While Tertullian declared himself opposed to Greek philosophy, his words always have to be
taken with caution. His preoccupation with rhetorical invective threatens to conceal a considerable
intelligence and breadth of learning. He certainly knew something of the great Greek historian
Herodotus and had read widely in Plato. He was able to write in Greek and his earliest treatises are
in that language. His first audiences must have been Greek-speaking Christians. His language also
sparkles with imagination and vivacity. As a man who loved a battle, he was relentless and brilliant
in the deployment of every rhetorical device in the humiliation of his opponents. The most profound
influence on him was the Stoics. It can be assumed, from the quality of his education, that he came
from a well-off background and like many of his class he was attracted by the selfless endurance in
the face of fate that the Stoics preached.
Yet there were other influences on Tertullian. He had a good understanding of the terminology of
law, which suggests a legal training. The word praescriptio was used in the law courts to denote an
objection against a case that was out of order. So when Tertullian called his major work against
heretics the Praescriptio haereticorum, he was suggesting heretics did not deserve any kind of
hearing. His mastery of Latin was such that he was able to use the language creatively to develop
terminology that was to be important in the formulation of Christian doctrine. While he transferred
Greek terms into Latin, as with ecclesia for church, he also invented new ones, such as sacramentum
(and so sacrament) for the Greek mysterion. He coined trinitas and put in place the vocabulary of
later Trinitarian debate with the terms substantia and persona, the substance of a single Godhead
within which there were distinct personalities. One of his most successful conceptualisations was the
anima naturaliter Christiana, the soul that in its humble and uneducated state (another dig at the
philosophers) is naturally attuned to an awareness of God. Tertullian successfully, even brilliantly,
pioneered the cultured Latinisation of Christian discourse.1
What attracted an educated man of comparatively high social status like Tertullian to the new faith?
In a society where philosophy and learning were less valued than they were in Greece, the loss of
status for those who converted must have been strongly felt. It meant immediate exclusion from the
round of civic festivals that gave city life so much meaning. Yet Tertullians treatise against luxury of
dress, On the Adornment of Women, suggests that he knew many extravagant women of his class who
had already converted to Christianity. When he warns the governor of the province against instituting
a persecution of Christians, he tells him that he will offend many of the governors own order and
other leading personages.
Tertullians church is one in which ritual has become important for its own sake. In his De corona,
a discussion of whether a soldier should have refused to wear a laurel wreath because he was a
Christian, Tertullian explores the nature of convention and ritual and notes that there are many
Christian rites and customs that are not even mentioned in scripture. The rite of baptism, he tells us, is
far more elaborate than the one Jesus experienced while the Eucharist is now often taken at daybreak
independently of a communal meal. Yet these rites should be observed because they have become
embedded in church practice. If, for these and other such rules, you insist upon having positive
Scripture injunction, you will find none. Tradition will be held forth to you as the originator of them,
custom as their strengthener, and faith as their observer. This suggests that, in Carthage at least, the
church was developing its own liturgy independently of the gospels (which, at this time, were only
available for Latin speakers in crude translations). As with traditional Roman worship, the liturgy
had become sanctified by repetition over time.
Just as he expects order in his rituals, Tertullian also requires commitment to a set of doctrines.
The teaching of Christ is embodied in the rule of faith. In Chapter Thirteen of Praescriptio
haereticorum, Tertullian sets out the rule as a creed. It includes the belief in one God, who created
the world out of nothing and sent his Son, the Word, who had already been recognised as such by the
patriarchs and the prophets, to earth. Born of the Virgin Mary, Christ preached the new law, was
crucified and ascended into heaven on the third day. The Holy Ghost was now sent to earth to lead
such as believe. Eventually Christ will come with glory to take the saints to the enjoyment of
everlasting life and of the heavenly promises, and to condemn the wicked to everlasting fire, after the
resurrection of both these classes shall have happened, together with the restoration of their flesh
This rule, as it will be proved, was taught by Christ, and raises amongst ourselves no other questions
than those which heresies introduce, and which make men heretics. So, for Tertullian, issues such as
the creation of the world and the resurrection of the body, which were still disputed in the east, have
become orthodox belief. Note too, in contrast to Origen, the belief in everlasting hell fire.
Tertullian suggests that orthodoxy is so firmly established that those who challenge it must by their
very nature be heretics. He sees himself in the vanguard of the fight to preserve the traditions of the
church and, in the longest of his works, Against Marcion, he revels in the demolition of Marcions
theology. For Tertullian, and here he echoes Irenaeus, there is a deposit of faith, passed down in an
unchanging and unchallengeable form through the apostles and the very act of questioning it is itself to
be condemned. Tertullian insinuates that heretics live undisciplined lives, not only personally (he
talks of the immorality of their women), but because of their curiosity. They are totally unscrupulous
in their beliefs so long as these challenge the truth. They huddle up anyhow with all comers; for it
matters not to them, however different be their treatment of subjects, provided only they can conspire
together to storm the citadel of the one only Truth. All are puffed up, all offer you knowledge.
This waspish attitude to life extends to Tertullians view of asceticism, women and sex. He was
deeply concerned with the power of the devil to subvert the faithful especially after they had just
made their baptism. If they sin at this important juncture in their lives, then they must go through a
second repentance. The penitent is expected to nourish prayers with fast, to groan, to weep, and to
bellow day and night to the Lord God; to fall prostrate before the presbyters and kneel before the
altars of God; to enjoin upon all his brothers the embassy of his own entreaty the less you spare
yourself the more will God spare you. Tertullian was deeply misogynistic. Women are the devils
gateway. His On the Veiling of Virgins addresses the issue of some young girls in his congregation
who had committed themselves to virginity. Their fellow-believers encouraged them to free
themselves of the veils they would normally have worn, in order to show the superior status they had
reached through their renunciation. Tertullian was having none of it. Even in their new state, they
were still alluring. Like many ascetics, he compared sexuality to a permanent bubbling cesspit of
desire. It became the sin that transcended all others and women were indeed the means through which
the devil encouraged downfall. They could not escape this role and he ordered the veils to be put
back on.2
Tertullians austerity extended to welcoming martyrdom, even seeming to suggest that it is a
necessary sacrifice to appease God (perhaps there is an echo of Punic worship here). As he puts it in
his An Antidote to the Scorpions Sting, Does God covet mans blood? And yet I might venture to
affirm that He does, if man also covets the kingdom of heaven, if man covets a sure salvation, if man
also covets a second new birth. When confronted by the text used by Origen to show that Jesus
recommended that his disciples, and hence their successors, flee persecution (Matthew 10:23),
Tertullian replied that it applied to that instance alone and to no other. Instead he gave primacy to a
verse he attributed to Paul: I am glad of my suffering on your behalf, as, in this mortal frame of mine,
I help to pay off the debt which the afflictions of Christ still leave to be paid for the sake of his body,
the Church (Colossians 1:24). The good Christian, in Tertullians view, therefore actively wills his
sacrifice. In the concluding chapter to his Apology, which is addressed to the magistrates of Carthage,
he makes the point explicitly: It is quite true that it is our desire to suffer, but it is in the way that the
soldier longs for war. No one indeed suffers willingly, since suffering necessarily implies fear and
danger. Yet the man who objected to the conflict, both fights with all his strength, and when
victorious, he rejoices in the battle, because he reaps from it glory and spoil Nor does your [the
persecutors] cruelty, however exquisite, avail you; it is rather a temptation to us. The oftener we are
mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.
In the Praescriptio Tertullian accepts that the rule of faith has been passed on down through the
churches founded by the apostles. This presented enough problems for the church now that the lines of
succession had stretched for two hundred years. Yet, paradoxically, as he grew older, Tertullian found
less and less fulfilment within the institutional church and he turned towards the Montanists, those
who claimed that God was talking to them directly through the Holy Spirit. From about 208, he seems
to have committed himself to this movement and he remained a Montanist for the remaining ten or
fifteen years of his active life. There is no evidence that Tertullian was excommunicated but later
Latin theologians approached him with caution. His fellow-Carthaginian Cyprian seems to have used
his work without any acknowledgement and Augustine was ambivalent towards him. He has never
been canonised. Nevertheless he has been called the first theologian of the west3 and it is hard to
see who else might challenge him for the accolade.
Tertullian must have been an awkward member of any community; it is easy to imagine him
irritating anyone who wished to live anything like a normal life and his attraction to the personal
revelations of Gods message claimed by the Montanists may well reflect his rejection by the bishops
of his native city. In Tertullians eyes, bishops were essentially administrators, taking on the tasks of
baptism simply because this provides order in the organisation. They do not enjoy spiritual power by
virtue of their office. This minimalist approach disregarded the earlier teachings of Ignatius and
Irenaeus on the authority of the bishop but these were to be reasserted by the next important figure of
Carthaginian Christianity, the bishop Cyprian.
Cyprian must have come from very much the same social background as Tertullian, although his
roots appear to be Punic or Berber, his status as a well-educated and prosperous man a tribute to the
success of Romanisation. At his conversion, he tells us in his Life, he rejected worldly ambition,
probably a reference to the civic posts that a man of high class would naturally aspire to, and he made
over his estate near Carthage to the poor. Not much more is known until he became bishop of the city
in 248 or 249, only two or three years after his conversion. In the account he gives in The Life, he
suggests that he was propelled into the position over the heads of older clergy by the acclaim of the
plebs, the mass of Christians. This was very typical of the way a magistrate would be appointed in
Roman colonies where the citizens had a vote. The community he took over seems to have been
expanding although there is no evidence that it was wealthy or secure enough to have its own public
buildings.
Once in post, Cyprian purged his writing of classical allusions and engaged in a deep study of the
scripture. He was literalist in his interpretations of texts and, even though he never named him, relied
heavily on Tertullians works, which were no doubt those closest to hand. He comes across, however,
as a much less intense personality, writing with genuine affection to his close friends and talking more
warmly of the loving nature of God than Tertullian ever did. In his understanding of his role as
bishop, he drew on traditional Roman models. The office was described in similar terms to that of a
Roman provincial governor. As Cyprian puts it in one of his letters, the bishop was the judge
representing Christ, just as a governor might represent the emperor. He even describes his diocese as
a provincia, the allotted territory within which a governors rule was absolute, while those who
opposed him were described as rebels and revolutionaries, very much as a Roman governor would
see them. His staff was graded, from the readers, through the letter carriers, deacons and presbyters,
who instructed catechumens and could celebrate the Eucharist, to the bishop himself. He assumed that
a gifted Christian would make the ascent just as a Roman citizen traditionally followed the cursus, the
route up through the various magistracies to the top position, and he would channel his patronage
towards those he favoured as a Roman patron would.
It appears, then, that Cyprian adapted the political structure he would have known well in Carthage
to Christian purposes. Yet there was an important difference in that God had to be accorded the
supreme role, the heavenly equivalent of an emperor. Gods power was awesome, especially when
directed against those who challenged the authority of his bishops. Heresies and schism were the
result of a failure to recognise that there is but one bishop and judge who acts in Christs stead for
the time being. Against Tertullian, who had denied that bishops had the power to grant absolution,
Cyprian argued that in fact it was only the bishops who could absolve by virtue of the power they had
obtained by God through their office.
The issue soon became a live one. In 250 a new emperor, Decius, ordered that all should show
their commitment to the state by sacrificing to the pagan gods. Cyprian was horrified by the number of
his congregation who gave in. Anxious not to offer any provocation, he decided to withdraw from
Carthage. What I fear is that my presence may provoke an outburst of violence and resentment among
the pagans, whereas it is particularly a duty of ours to ensure that everyone is left undisturbed.
However, many of those Christians who had stood firm were thrown into prison and Cyprian began to
receive criticism for his abandonment of them. In his absence some of the presbyters who had
remained in Carthage, urged on by those imprisoned, began to pardon those who had lapsed in the
face of persecution. This was a direct affront to Cyprians authority as bishop and he reacted firmly
by excommunicating the miscreants. As the persecution lost its intensity, he summoned a council of
bishops to Carthage to support his authority. Hardly surprisingly, the bishops made common cause
against the presbyters in insisting that a bishop alone could authorise penance.
How was this to be effected and on what terms? Could a compromise be reached between
recognition of the seriousness of the betrayal of ones faith and compassion for the weakness of the
individual? While excluded from the church the lapsed were deprived of any personal security they
might have enjoyed as members of a close-knit community and were faced with the threat of their
souls suffering eternal torment. Yet forgiveness was not to be granted easily. As one of his letters puts
it: People coming back from the altars of Satan approach the Lords sacred flesh, their hands still
foul and reeking. A period of repentance was needed. Let no one commit his ship again to the deep,
when it has been broken and holed by the waves, until he has carefully repaired it. Let no one put on a
torn tunic unless he has seen it mended by the trained craftsmen and treated by the fuller. It was
eventually agreed that those who had only compromised their faith in a minor way (such as obtaining
a certificate which said that they had sacrificed even if they had not) could be given immediate
forgiveness by a bishop (but only by a bishop) while those who had gone so far as actually to make a
sacrifice must make greater penitence before forgiveness. They would only be forgiven immediately
if they were close to death.
In De unitate, On the Unity of the Church, a document he brought to the council, Cyprian
reasserts the authority of the bishops as equal members of a united church. He waxes eloquent: The
episcopate is one, each part of which is held by each one for the whole. The Church also is one,
which is spread abroad far and wide into a multitude by an increase of fruitfulness. As there are many
rays of the sun, but one light; and many branches of a tree, but one strength based in its tenacious root;
and since from one spring flow many streams, although the multiplicity seems diffused in the
liberality of an overflowing abundance, yet the unity is still preserved in the source. He goes on to
assert that he can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother. There is
no salvation outside the church: Whoever breaks with the Church cuts himself off from the promises
made to the Church; and he who turns his back on the Church of Christ will not come to the rewards
of Christ: he is an alien, a worldling, an enemy.
This was coherent enough but the unity of the church was to prove difficult to sustain. As the status
of bishops rose, it was essential to find a process for their appointment that had wide approval. Many
dioceses involved their congregations in elections and Cyprian himself had gained his see through the
support of the laity (who, he argued, had been inspired in their choice by God). Yet it was also wise
for a bishop to have the support of his neighbouring fellow bishops and these would often gather in
the vacant diocese to participate in the election. In 251 there was a vacancy for the bishopric in
Rome, after the previous bishop, Fabian, had been martyred in the Decian persecution. Both
candidates, Cornelius and Novatian, wrote to Cyprian asking for their support and each then claimed
that they had been elected with the support of other Italian bishops. Cyprian wavered but then
recognised Cornelius, partly on the grounds that his election appeared to have taken place first but
also because Cornelius shared his view that a bishop should be able to forgive those who had lapsed.
Novatian insisted that clemency was never justified only God at the Last Judgement could decide
the issue.
Thwarted in his ambition to become bishop of Rome, Novatian set himself up as a rival bishop to
Cornelius. For many of his followers this was a step too far and they abandoned him and asked to be
readmitted to the church of Cornelius and Cyprian. Yet did those who had been baptised by Novatian
have to be baptised again? Cyprian took a hard line. He argued that by setting himself up as a rival
bishop, Novatian was guilty of schism. Schismatics, as De unitate made clear, were outside the
church. Those now joining the official church had simply never been registered as Christians at all
and now had to be baptised as if for the first time. Cyprian secured the support of a local council of
bishops and, with Cornelius acknowledged as the bishop of Rome, his position seemed secure.
Despite some disagreements in other parts of the empire there was a chance that the church could be
united on the issue.
However, in June 253 Cornelius died and his successor Stephen took an opposite view. It did not
matter, Stephen argued, that the original bishop carrying out the baptism was unworthy; it was still a
baptism as the Holy Spirit could bypass the unworthiness of the celebrant. He was simply a medium
through whom the Spirit passed. Nowhere in either scripture or the practice of the apostles was there
any backing for the idea of a second baptism. So those abandoning Novatian did not have to seek
rebaptism. Cyprian risked being rebuffed but he reacted cautiously. He gained further backing for his
position from another council, this time of seventy-one bishops from the African provinces, and then
wrote a conciliatory letter to Stephen hoping that the power of the Holy Spirit would bring the church
to consensus on the matter. The letter he received back, however, was, as he put it, arrogant,
irrelevant, self-contradictory, ill-considered and inept. Although the letter does not survive, Stephen,
secure as bishop of the ancient see of Rome, the successor of no less than the apostle Peter, was
clearly not going to be dictated to by a provincial bishop.
A battle was on. Cyprian began a programme of intense networking. A new council, this time of
eighty-seven bishops, was summoned to Carthage to support him and he received backing from as far
afield as the Greek bishoprics of Asia Minor. Tensions mounted further. Stephen told the bishops of
Asia that he was no longer in communion with them. One bishop from Cappadocia retaliated with a
highly abusive letter to Stephen: Look, for instance, at the quarrels, the dissensions you have
provoked throughout the churches all over the world! Look at the magnitude of the sin you have
heaped upon yourself by cutting yourself off from so many flocks! While imagining it was in your
power to excommunicate everyone, you have in fact succeeded in excommunicating yourself alone,
from everyone else.
Stephen died in 257 and, when a new wave of persecution was launched by the emperor Valerian,
the issue was left unresolved. In this persecution Cyprian stayed in the city with his flock. The citys
governor did not want to risk an open confrontation with Cyprian and he sent him into exile. Later he
was brought back to Carthage and executed in 258. The matter of authority lay dormant until it flared
up again after the next major bout of persecution in the early fourth century.
 The legacy of Cyprians reign remained an ambiguous one. He had used his status and the prestige
of his own bishopric to enhance the authority of the office. Bishops were to become increasingly
powerful figures in the years to come and De unitate a seminal document for the authority of the
church. Cyprian had also shown that there could be a hierarchy of bishops with a senior bishop, a
metropolitan as they became known, acting to coordinate the activities of the other bishops in his area
through common council. With Carthage as the largest city in North Africa and Cyprian himself an
imposing personality, it was an understandable development. Yet as the row with Stephen showed,
the relationship between Rome and the provincial bishops was still fluid. When a major theological
issue arose, and the question of rebaptism was surely one, had Rome the right to impose its views on
everyone else? Cyprians own writings show that he was confused on the matter. Some texts suggest
that he respected the primacy of Rome, others that, when confronted by Stephen, he was deeply
reluctant to compromise. He told one bishop that Peter himself did not claim to usurp anything for
himself insolently and arrogantly, the implication being that he had a right to disregard Rome if
Peters successors behaved arrogantly. The question of how church authority was to be exercised
and through whom was still unresolved but the Christians of North Africa had instituted a particularly
rigorous form of Christianity and its later impact on western Christianity, through Augustine, the
bishop of Hippo, was to be immense.
 CHAPTER TWENTY
Victims or Volunteers
CHRISTIAN MARTYRS

THE EARLIEST VOICE OF A CHRISTIAN WOMAN TO SURVIVE IS THAT of Perpetua, a martyr who was
persecuted in Carthage in the early third century. Perpetua was a well-born woman of twenty-two,
mother of a baby boy whom she was still suckling when she was arrested as a catechumen. (She was
baptised when in prison.) In the Passion account of herself and a slave girl Felicity1 no reason is
given for her arrest and it causes great distress within her family. Her father pleads for her to show
reverence to the traditional gods but she steadfastly refuses. She is sentenced to death in the arena and
meanwhile is thrown into prison together with three male Christians and Felicity, the slave of one of
them. Here she has a series of visions, most of which envisage a welcome into heaven. In one her
older brother, who had died of cancer of the face, is shown healed and refreshed by water from a
golden bowl. In another she fights an immense and repulsive Egyptian in the arena and triumphs over
him. She realises that it is no less than Satan whom she has conquered.
After the first part of the Passion, which is in Perpetuas words, the focus turns to the narration by
a sympathetic observer of the execution itself. The Christians spend some months in the prison, during
which Felicity, who was pregnant at the time of her arrest, gives birth to a daughter. Their martyrdom
is delayed until the emperors birthday when there are special games. The martyrs are then taken to
the arena. The women are stripped and wrapped in nets and taken into the arena where they are
savaged by beasts before being dispatched by gladiators. Perpetua guides the gladiators sword to her
own throat. The crowd roars with callous approval as the spectacle unfolds. Somehow the mangled
bodies were recovered and in the fifth century were recorded as being buried in the main basilica in
Carthage.
The original meaning of the word martyr is witness and it was used in classical Greek not only
as a legal term, the witness in the court, but to depict many kinds of observer. In the gospels it refers
to those who witnessed the suffering of Jesus on the cross and his resurrection. It is not until the
second century AD that it is recorded in the sense of someone who is prepared to die for his or her
faith. There were, of course, precedents of Greeks and Romans who died for their beliefs. Even
Christians were prepared to recognise that Socrates, condemned to death by an Athenian jury in 399,
was some kind of martyr. His insistence on speaking freely had proved too disturbing to his fellow
citizens and the account of his death by Plato enjoyed a cult status. There were Roman heroes such as
the conservative republican Cato who preferred to take his own life than live under what he believed
would be the dictatorship of Julius Caesar, or the Stoic philosopher Seneca who felt the same about
Nero. However, there was no hint in these cases that they believed a better life lay ahead; it was
rather that continuing to live under tyranny was unbearable.
A more direct influence on Christians, and certainly on the way the martyr narratives were
composed, might have been the Maccabean martyrs. The Seleucid king Antiochus IV, a Greek,
entered Jerusalem in the 160s BC and launched a campaign of persecution against the Jews in which
he attempted to force some to eat pork. The stories of Eleazer, one of the chief scribes, and the
seven brothers, are recounted in the apocryphal 4 Maccabees.2 It may date from the second century
AD and it contains an account of martyrdoms that are very similar in style to those of the Christians.
The accused are arrested, brought to trial, ordered to eat pork, tortured when they refuse and finally
put to death. The brothers talk of resurrection to a new life: By our suffering and endurance, we shall
obtain the prize of virtue and shall be with God on whose account we suffer. There is an echo of this
story in the account, probably written by Irenaeus, of the death of slave girl Blandina in Lyons (see p.
209). She refers to her spiritual children in very much the same way that the mother of the seven
brothers refers to her sons, suggesting that Christians must have known the text. Stephen, normally
seen as the first martyr, tells his angry listeners that there was never a prophet who was not
persecuted. He too sees himself as heir to a Jewish tradition of persecution, here of Jewish prophets
rejected by their own people (Acts 7:513).
Yet there is something unique about Christian martyrdom. None of the pagan martyrs seems to have
sought death in the way that whole groups of Christians did, in some accounts pleading with
magistrates to be executed: Allow me to be bread for the wild beasts, through whom I am able to
attain to God. I am the wheat of God and am ground by the teeth of wild beasts, that I may be the pure
bread of Christ, as Ignatius of Antioch put it, as he was taken off to Rome for execution, frightened
that his supporters in the city might intercede to save him. In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
reflects on the rational (Stoic) soul, which is at peace with itself and so ready for death when it
comes. He contrasts this with the obstinacy of Christians, suggesting that they meet death without
dignity and with tragic show.
Tertullian, the most relentless of the advocates of martyrdom, argued that if the martyrs of the
pagan world were prepared to sacrifice their lives for false ideals, Christians should be expected to
be even more willing as they were dying for the truth. Even so, the motives for the desire remain
obscure. For many, the commitment to Christ meant sharing in his sacrifice on the cross. There was a
personal identification with Christ and his suffering, perhaps intensified by the experience of
absorbing the body and blood of Christ at the Eucharist, that was very different from the refusal of the
Maccabees to offend the Law. As Ignatius puts it: if, as unbelievers say, His suffering was but a
make-believe then why am I in chains. Why do I pray that I may fight with wild beasts? He is
assuming the death of Jesus was not a humiliation but a triumph worthy of emulation. The slave girl
Blandina takes on the aura of Christ himself: onlookers saw in the person of their sister [who was
hung from a pole] him who was crucified for them, that he [Christ] might convince all who believe in
him that all who suffer for Christs sake will have eternal fellowship in the living God.3 The writer
of the Letter to the Colossians, possibly Paul, suggests that martyrdom is repaying the debt. I am glad
of my suffering on your behalf, as, in this mortal frame of mine, I help to pay off the debt which the
afflictions of Christ still leave to be paid for the sake of his body, the Church (Colossians 1:24).
There is no record at all of how the impulse towards martyrdom was generated whether small
groups built up each others courage or whether charismatic leaders created mass hysteria.
This eagerness also reflects the power of the afterlife. Martyrdom would have been inconceivable
without the certainty that there was a world into which martyrs would be welcomed. Cyprian records
their beliefs: In persecutions the earth is shut up but heaven is opened. Antichrist threatens but Christ
rescues: death is brought in, but immortality follows; the world is taken away from the slain, but
paradise is revealed to the redeemed: temporal life is extinguished, but eternal life is restored. What
an honour, and what security, it is to go gladly from this place, to depart gloriously from amongst
oppressions and afflictions to shut ones eyes for a moment and to open them again at once to see
God and Christ. Many of the accounts describe martyrs actually laughing as the nails are driven in or
the fire lit beneath them. According to the Christian poet Prudentius, when Lawrence was being
roasted to death on a grid in Rome, he quipped to his executioners, This part of my body has been
burned long enough. Turn it round and try what your hot god of fire has done. These accounts need to
be read with caution. The agonies of these tortures could hardly have been experienced with such
aplomb and the repetition of the laughter and joy in different accounts suggests that it was intrinsic to
the genre, added to the narrative whatever the reality.
The stage on which the martyrdom took place allowed a dramatic literary presentation. The empire
was not a shabby dictatorship of the kind seen so often in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
where dissidents just vanish, often by the thousand. Justice in the Roman Empire, unless in response
to revolt when any kind of retaliation was permissible, was formal and public. Only a provincial
governor could order an execution and there had to be some kind of trial with an interrogation of the
accused before sentence was passed. This, of course, gave the martyr a platform from which to
proclaim his or her faith. While there were cruel and corrupt governors, many struggled to keep some
fairness to the proceedings. What is remarkable about the early martyr accounts is the willingness of
the authorities to be lenient; it is often the refusal of Christians to compromise which leads to their
deaths.
The format is well illustrated, for instance, by a vivid account of the martyrdom of St Polycarp,
bishop of Smyrna, and his followers, possibly in 155. The proconsul (of the province of Asia)
continually urged Polycarp to recant and even gave him the opportunity to explain his beliefs to the
crowds. However, Polycarp seemed set on martyrdom, as did his companion Germanicus: For the
most noble Germanicus strengthened the timidity of others by his own patience, and fought heroically
with the wild beasts. For, when the proconsul sought to persuade him, and urged him to take pity upon
his [advanced] age, he attracted the wild beast towards himself, and provoked it, being desirous to
escape all the more quickly from an unrighteous and impious world.
The magistrates were embarrassed when their authority was ridiculed and often the governor tried
to interrogate prisoners in private or hold a number of short trials that were abandoned as soon as the
accused began to proclaim his or her faith. It was the aftermath that was brutal. The Romans had
perfected the public execution as both humiliation and entertainment. The condemned was as a slave
to the penalty as one source puts it. He had no rights and was just an object to be played with. The
day in the arena began with the hunting of wild animals and then in the middle of the entertainment
came the executions, which included, of course, all the criminals sentenced to death. The prisoners
were bound or nailed to stakes or placed in stocks on a raised platform, then they were savaged by
beasts. Those who had not died were dispatched by gladiators. A new Christian mythology emerges
which has a powerful emphasis on the minutiae of violence. Martyrdom becomes a form of spectacle
in itself.
A particularly harrowing example from the second century survives in a letter from Lyons that
Eusebius includes in his History of the Church. Lyons was the administrative capital of Gaul and a
prosperous city at the junction of important rivers and roads. It had attracted a large community of
migrants including some Greek-speaking Christians. Christians had already been banned from public
places in the city (they were charged with bringing into this country a new foreign cult) but in 177 a
mob rounded them up and dragged them before the local governor. Some forty, including the
congregations bishop, Pothinus, were condemned to death by beheading or execution in the arena.
The brutalities imposed on the martyrs and their steadfastness under persecution are recorded in
grotesque detail. The death of the slave girl, Blandina, was especially inspiring to her co-religionists:
After the whips, after the beasts, after the griddle, she was finally dropped into basket and thrown to
a bull. Time after time the animal tossed her until finally she was hung from a post and savaged by
wild beasts until she died. What local tensions led to this outburst of persecution is unknown but
Christians were often immigrants seeking artisan work and this may have been a factor in the
violence. The authorities were giving in to popular pressure to eliminate outsiders.
As Christianity spread to the upper classes, governors were even more reluctant to send Christians
into the arena. Confronted by a man of stature such as Cyprian, the first response was exile. However,
Cyprian insisted on returning to Carthage where he was beheaded, the traditional punishment for a
Roman citizen, in the garden of his own house, relatively protected from the public gaze.
The case of Pionius shows just how hesitant a governor could be to order an execution. Pionius
was a native of Smyrna, the city where Polycarp had been martyred ninety-five years before. In fact,
Pionius claimed to have had a vision of Polycarp, who became a spiritual mentor to him throughout
his ordeals. The Decian persecution of 2501 had begun and Pionius and his companions were
determined to make a public display of their resistance to carrying out a sacrifice. They bound
themselves in chains even before they were arrested to show that they fully accepted their fate. As
they were led off, Pionius spoke eloquently to a crowd of Jews and pagans and aroused their
sympathy. There was fear that if he was brought into the arena there would be disturbances among his
supporters. Polemon, the temple official in charge of the sacrifices, tried to find a compromise, even
suggesting that Pionius sacrificed only to the emperor rather than to the gods. Pionius refused and the
case was eventually brought in front of the governor who again tried to persuade Pionius to sacrifice
or eat some sacrificial meat to no avail. Pionius was ordered to be burned. In one of his speeches
Pionius inveighed against the Jews and they joined with the pagans in calling for his death.
The sheer horror of the proceedings and distaste among more sophisticated Christians such as
Clement and Origen meant that there was intense debate over the justification for offering oneself in
what appeared to be a suicidal sacrifice. In Book One of his De corona, which deals with a Christian
soldier who refuses to wear the laurel wreath and is martyred, Tertullian ridicules his fellow
Christians who consider the action unnecessarily provocative: Their pastors are lions in peace, deer
in the fight, but he cannot conceal that there was deep unease among the Christian communities at
those who allowed themselves to be martyred. For many bishops, the adulation that martyrs received
was a threat to their own authority. Far from being Tertullians seed of the church martyrs must often
have been an embarrassment.
Clement of Alexandria presents the argument against martyrdom in its most sophisticated form in
the fourth book of his Stromateis. He goes back to the original meaning of the word martyr witness.
The true witness, he argues is the one who openly confesses his faith to glorify God and inspires
others to conversion. There is no need to involve death in this and certainly not to seek it. In fact, he
goes on, anyone who does so is the cause of anothers (the persecutors) sin. Surely, the crucifixion of
Jesus had in itself atoned for all sins and no more self-sacrifice was needed. Christ himself had
advised his disciples to flee from persecution (Matthew 10:23), proving that the rush to martyrdom
was completely unjustified. It was little more than suicide.
The martyr narratives are so powerful that they have left an impression of widespread persecution
of Christians. However, in his On the Deaths of the Persecutors, Lactantius, writing in the early
fourth century, notes no persecuting emperor between Domitian and Decius, granting 150 years of
what he calls peace in the church. There were certainly outbursts of pure vindictiveness against
Christians, such as that of Nero in 64, described by Tacitus, when Christians were tied up in animal
skins and taken to the beasts or set alight like torches but this, apparently, only aroused sympathy for
Christians. The early accounts show that magistrates seldom initiated campaigns of persecution but
that crowds often pressurised them into doing so. Many Christians went on living openly as such even
during the persecutions. Perpetua had Christians around her who were able to visit her in prison
without hindrance. Irenaeus returned to Lyons to become bishop there after the outburst of persecution
in the city; whatever local tensions had caused it seemed to have died down.
The persecution initiated by the emperor Decius was more sweeping but it was not primarily an
attack on Christians. Decius was an elderly senator who emerged as emperor in 249 after his troops
had killed his predecessor. He looked back to tradition to boost his position. He added the name of
the great soldier-emperor Trajan to his own, used coins that echoed earlier imperial models and
requested through an edict that all return to worship of the traditional gods. An inscription found in
Italy refers to him as restorer of the sacred things. There is no mention of Christians in the edict at
all, although Jews were specifically exempted from having to sacrifice. There was no organised
assault on the church and many of the leaders were able to go into hiding as Cyprian had done. The
limited evidence suggests that it was easy to avoid having to sacrifice simply by lying low. It was
only those whose loyalty seemed in doubt who were asked to provide a certificate, the libellus,
issued by the temple officials once a sacrifice had been made and the sacrificial meat consumed.
Thousands of Christians gave in and many others obtained certificates through bribery or sympathetic
officials without actually sacrificing. Those who refused were normally imprisoned rather than
executed but they often suffered torture or deprivation of food or water to make them conform. Those
who publicly confessed their Christianity and refused to sacrifice gained great honour. They were
visited in prison by Christians and even interested pagans, and were assumed to have special divine
powers, especially to forgive sins.
The Decian persecution ended with the death of the emperor in June 251 and peace returned. The
next recorded persecution, that of the emperor Valerian, was more specifically targeted at Christians.
Valerian was facing new crises in the empire. The important frontier post of Dura-Europus had fallen
to the Persians in the autumn of 256 and Valerian decreed that the favour of the gods must be restored
to the embattled empire. He ordered that no Christian services be held and that Christian cemeteries
where worship took place be seized. Bishops were targeted and summoned before the governors. In
Alexandria, Bishop Dionysius was told he could worship his Christian god but only alongside those
of the state. He refused. The God of the Christians, Dionysius told his interrogator, was of a
completely different order to those of the pagans. A year later the arrest of all church ministers was
ordered. Any senator or knight who was Christian would be deprived of his status and property as
would upper-class women (the matronae). Civil servants were to be reduced to slavery and sent off
to work on the imperial estates. Cyprian died in this persecution, as did the bishop of Rome, Sixtus II,
who was tracked down to the catacomb of Callistus and killed there. (A tombstone over his presumed
resting place can still be seen.) The persecution only came to an end when Valerian suffered his own
humiliation after being captured by the Persians at Edessa. The new emperor, Gallienus, was
sympathetic to Christians and an order of 261 survives in which he restores their places of worship
to the Christians of Egypt. There followed a period of peace for the church with only scattered
accounts of persecution. The emperor Aurelian was even approached to arbitrate in a dispute over the
bishops house in Antioch.
The empire-wide persecutions of Decius and Valerian were a new departure. Cyprian saw them as
punishment from God for the laxity of the church: Among the priests there was no devotedness of
religion; among the ministers there was no sound faith: in their works there was no mercy; in their
manners there was no discipline. Not a few bishops became agents in secular business, forsook
their throne, deserted their people, wandered about over foreign provinces, hunted the markets for
gainful merchandise, while brethren were starving in the Church. It is hard to know how to take this
description of his church by such a prominent bishop (which echoes similar concerns of Origen), but
it warns against oversimplistic descriptions of Christian communities of the third century as well
organised and committed.
In the 290s, after thirty years of tolerance, pressures built up again on Christians. The emperor
Diocletian was one of the most remarkable men the empire had ever seen. Of low birth, possibly the
son of a slave, he rose through the ranks of the army to seize power in a coup in 284. He put in place
a sweeping programme of political, economic and military reform. Crucial was the reorganisation of
the empire under four emperors two senior ones, the Augusti, and two juniors, the Caesars
(Constantius and Galerius). The empire was divided territorially between them and a much more
effective structure of local administration instituted. Taxes were collected more efficiently and
channelled towards the army. At last the Persians were beaten back from the borders of the eastern
empire with a great victory in 297, led by Galerius, that saw peace preserved there for almost a
century.
Galerius was strongly anti-Christian. He began by purging his army of Christians (whose loyalty to
the state could be doubted when they refused to sacrifice) and then put pressure on his fellow
emperors to launch a more coordinated campaign. Diocletian was hesitant to join in. He recognised
that transferring resources to persecutions did little to strengthen the empire. He finally agreed that
persecution could go ahead only if it involved no bloodshed. In February 303 Christians were banned
from using the courts and those who were civil servants were to lose their jobs. Church property and
copies of the scriptures could be seized for burning. It proved impossible to confine the persecution
within these limits. At a time of social and economic tension, crowds got out of control in Phrygia a
Christian town was surrounded by troops and everyone one in it killed. In 305 Diocletian abdicated
leaving Galerius free to impose far harsher penalties on Christians either death or committal to the
mines, which offered little more chance of survival. Egypt, North Africa and Palestine all recorded
martyrs. Eusebius tells how the methods of execution varied from province to province: by axe in
Arabia, hanging by the feet over a slow fire in Mesopotamia, mutilation in Alexandria, torture to
death by roasting in Antioch. An account of the martyrdom of Crispina, a matron of Theveste in the
province of Africa, follows the standard accounts of decades earlier. The governor tries again and
again to force her to recant her faith. He has all her hair cut off in an attempt to shame her but it has no
effect and, as a Roman citizen, she is eventually beheaded.
Although, towards the end of life when he was in agony from bowel cancer, Galerius relented and
called off the persecution, his Caesar, Maximin, carried it on. Eusebius, whose History of the Church
was inspired by the sufferings he saw around him in Egypt, records an imperial rescript (the
emperors reply to a petition concerning the status of a law) which attributes the fertility of the
empire, the peace of the seas and protection from earthquakes and typhoons to the favour of the gods
which must not be lost. As with Trajan two hundred years before, Maximin had no interest in
persecuting those who had renounced their faith. Their return to the old ways should be rejoiced in
as if a storm had calmed or an illness been cured. Those, however, who persisted in practising
Christianity were to be banished from their towns. Maximin bolstered his message by commissioning
anti-Christian propaganda, notably a doctored account of the trial of Jesus before Pilate that was to be
posted up in every village. (One could always cast Christians as followers of a man who had
threatened the peace of the empire.) This moderate approach did not seem to work. Local crowds felt
free to go on the rampage against Christians. Eusebius records a mass of executions in Egypt that only
encouraged more to offer themselves for martyrdom.
In the west, the persecution was not enforced. Christians were still relatively rare in western
Europe but the emperor Constantius admired their courage and refrained from condemning them.
Gradually the emperors were coming to realise that the church was so deeply entrenched that it could
not be removed. Moreover, its hierarchy of bishops provided a model of effective authority that might
well be copied. Maximin, in fact, reorganised the pagan priesthood so that there should be a high
priest in each province, the equivalent of a metropolitan bishop, overseeing the revival of pagan
worship. A much wiser man, Constantine, the son and heir to Constantius and proclaimed emperor on
his death in 306, was to go further in co-opting the Christian hierarchy into the state and so changing
the history and nature of Christianity for ever.
When Polycarp was being burned, it was recorded by an observer that the fire took the shape of a
vaulted room, like a ships sail filled with the wind, and made a wall round the martyrs body, which
was in the middle not like burning flesh but like gold and silver refined in a furnace. Indeed we were
conscious of a wonderful fragrance, like a breath of frankincense or some other costly spice. Again
the text of The Martyrdom of Pionius ends with the scene at the funeral pyre in which a body is
transformed: After the fire had been extinguished, those of us who were present saw his body like
that of an athlete in full array at the height of his powers. His ears were not distorted; his hair lay in
order on the surface of his head; and his beard was full as though with the first blossom of hair. His
face shone once again wondrous grace! so that the Christians were all the more confirmed in the
faith, and those who had lost the faith returned dismayed and with fearful consciences. The intactness
of the martyrs body becomes part of the mythology, the symbol of the triumph of the body over death
through the miraculous intervention of God. The bones of a martyr are more precious than stones of
great price, more splendid than gold, writes Eusebius.
A tradition that the blood of executed criminals has some special potency, particularly in the cure
of epilepsy, seems to have transferred to Christianity.4 When friends of a martyr would desperately
want to take responsibility for the body, the authorities soon realised that Christians believed the
martyred body had spiritual power. There were fights over the remains of martyrs with the authorities
attempting to destroy the bodies so that Christians could not reclaim them. The bodies of the Lyons
martyrs were burned to ashes that were then thrown into the Rhone so that they could not rise again.
There were deeper forces at work. By the fourth century, the relics of these spiritualised bodies were
being used to effect cures. A handkerchief that touched the bones of martyrs discovered by the bishop
of Milan, Ambrose, had cured one mans blindness before they had even reached the city walls and
Ambrose was quick to distribute parts of his find to favoured bishops. The cult of relics, one of the
most influential developments in the history of medieval Christianity, had begun.
The Christian writer Lactantius, who described the agonies of Galerius as he lay dying of cancer,
believed that his afflictions were a just punishment from God. Within a few years, Lactantius, who
was to become the tutor of Constantines son, was able to record the triumph of the Christian God
over those who had abused him: They who insulted over the Divinity, lie low, he rejoiced, they
who cast down the holy temple are fallen with more tremendous ruin; and the tormentors of just men
have poured out their guilty souls amidst plagues inflicted by Heaven, and amidst deserved tortures.
For God delayed to punish them, that, by great and marvellous examples, He might teach posterity that
He alone is God, and that with fit vengeance He executes judgement on the proud, the impious, and
the persecutors. Here was divine support for new persecutions, but this time the victims would be
those who opposed Christianity.
 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Spread of Christian Communities
IN HIS HISTORY OF THE CHURCH, EUSEBIUS, BISHOP OF CAESAREA on the coast of Judaea, sees the period
from Gallienus to the outbreak of persecution by Diocletian, one of over forty years, as a period of
peace and growth. The goodwill the emperors showed to Christians was such that Christians were
now employed in the imperial households; in some cases they were apparently preferred to their non-
Christian counterparts, perhaps because their sober living made them more trustworthy servants.
There were cases, Eusebius tells us, of Christians becoming provincial governors, but even pagan
ones allowed Christians to meet freely. The growing congregations began planning major new church
buildings.1
The archaeological and epigraphic evidence to back up this assertion of growth is fragmentary,
especially as regards buildings. Of the hundreds of thousands of known inscriptions from the empire,
no more than a tiny minority relate to Christianity. There is only one Christian inscription from the
whole of Gaul before the reign of Constantine a gravestone that refers to the divine race of the
heavenly Fish.2 Again there is a single Christian pre-Constantinian inscription from Athens. In
Africa, not even Carthage has any archaeological evidence of Christianity. Only in Rome do the cata-
combs provide evidence of widespread activity. It is exceptionally difficult to build up much of a
picture of the Christian communities from these limited sources. The case of Gregory the
Wonderworker shows that Christians often exaggerated their success and Eusebius accounts of mass
meetings and enormous gatherings of Christians in these years have to be viewed with caution.
While most authorities agree that between 7 and 10 per cent of the population of the empire were
Christian by 300, this figure glosses over the unequal pattern of settlement and the intractable
problems of defining who was or was not a Christian at this period. Eusebius is now seen to have
defined Christianity as a much more organised movement than the evidence suggests it was.
Just how hard it is to define what is meant by a Christian community can be seen in Edessa, a city
on the borders of the empire in Mesopotamia.3 An early third-century Christian philosopher of the
city, Baidaisan, drew, in his teachings, on a wide range of traditions including Judaism, Stoicism and
Persian. He was never ordained but he was influential enough to convert the local ruler to
Christianity and his school was carried on by his son after his death. His primary target was the
Marcionites who were especially strong in Edessa and said to be the largest Christian group in the
city even as late as the 360s. Other Christian groups in Edessa saw Baidaisan as a heretic. In the
fourth century new strands of Christianity arose in Edessa, based, it seems, on the apocryphal story of
three aristocratic martyrs of the early second century. This invented cult existed alongside another of
three villagers who had died more recently, in the Diocletian persecution. By the 360s the most
influential Christian in the city was Ephraim, a refugee from the city of Nisibis that had been ceded to
the Persians. He stood for Nicene orthodoxy and became famous for his hymns that were written in
Syriac. He left polemics aimed at followers of Baidaisan, Marcion and Arius as well as Jews.
The situation in Syria was made more confused by the spread of the teachings of another of
Ephraims targets, the Persian prophet Mani, who was active between 240 and his death in Persia in
276. Mani presented himself as the Holy Spirit whose arrival had been promised by Christ in the
gospel of John. He drew on the Acts of the apostle Thomas to preach Christ as the Good Physician.
The divine spirit imprisoned in each earthly body could be released through the power of the Healer.
Manicheism relied heavily on Christian imagery and welcomed the apostle Paul into its mythology.
The movement spread throughout Syria and then further west into the empire. Augustine was a
Manicheist before he became an orthodox Christian. In the late third and early fourth centuries,
Manicheism was probably spreading faster than Christianity, even though its roots in Persia made it
suspect to the Roman authorities.
The church in Rome in the third century was even more diverse because so many of its leaders
were immigrants. Marcion came from Pontus, Justin from Palestine, Valentinus from Alexandria,
Irenaeus from Smyrna and the Montanists from Phrygia. They brought their own cultures and
theologies with them and many others attempted to set up their own schools in what was a tolerant
atmosphere for much of the second and early third centuries. Congregations centred on different
immigrant groups and adopted different approaches to doctrine and many survived from generation to
generation in mutual exclusion. One immigrant, Theodotus, who arrived from Byzantium in about 190,
successfully ran a congregation which believed Jesus was fully human and had only been adopted by
God at his baptism. The Theodotians were known for their learning and acute criticism of scripture
and the congregation was still there in the late fourth century.
The result was that Rome became the home of a fragmented Christianity with rival sects
denouncing each other as heretical. The sheer size of the city, with possibly a million inhabitants,
meant that different churches probably never interacted with each other. The bishop of Rome had
enormous difficulty in asserting his authority within the city and it is certainly premature to talk of
popes in anything like the sense we use today. The liturgy remained in Greek until the 380s when
Latin was imposed by Bishop Damasus. Alexandria was another city with a variety of competing
Christianities, with apparent tension between teachers who built up their own Christian schools and
bishops who resented this threat to their authority.
Traditional accounts of the history of Christianity have tended to assume that congregations were
stable and expanding in the third century. This is not what the sources suggest. Celsus described
Christians as at war with each other and even if he was exaggerating to make his case against the
upstart religion, he was echoed by the denunciations from Carthage by both Tertullian and Cyprian of
their fellow Christians in the first half of the third century. In Tertullians case the lack of commitment
of bishops was enough to make him leave the institutional church. Eusebius tells a similar story of the
late third century. Alongside his account of Christian growth, he records how those who were
supposed to be pastors cast off the restraining influence of the fear of God and quarrelled heatedly
with each other, engaged solely in swelling the disputes, threats, envy and mutual hostility and hate.
This, says Eusebius, lost the favour of God who and this echoed Jewish tradition in which the God
of Israel withdrew his favour from his own people and punished them unleashed the persecution of
Diocletian.
This was a troubled church and the aftermath of the persecution left it even more split between
those who were ready to welcome lapsed Christians back into the church and those who were
devastated by the betrayal. Any account suggesting that the spread of Christianity was characterised
by smooth undisturbed progress is simplistic.4 The best one can do to give an overview is to describe
some of the areas that are said to have had Christian communities in AD 300, even if it is not always
clear what form of Christianity one is talking of.
The greatest concentration of named sites is along the coasts of Syria and Judaea. These include
ancient Christian cities such as Antioch and the important maritime port of Caesarea, the diocese of
Eusebius, where Origen moved to in the early third century. One of the few cities in the empire
believed to have had a Christian majority in this period is Maiuma, the seaport of Gaza. Christianity
appears to have been attractive to the transient populations of these coastal cities. Then there was an
important scattering of Christian communities in Asia Minor, including those in Phrygia. Stephen
Mitchell, in his meticulous study of Anatolia in the early Christian centuries, has tried to locate and
quantify these Christian communities from the inscriptions on surviving tombs. It is hard to distinguish
between pagan and Christian as they were buried alongside each other, and both observed local
burial customs. A curse that violators [of tombs] would be accountable to the living God is only
used by Christians. A study of such gravestones in the upper Tembris valley in Phrygia gives an
estimate that 20 per cent of the population were Christian by 230, 80 per cent by 300. The only three
other cities in the empire believed to have had a Christian majority are in Phrygia. Again one has to
be cautious in saying what this means as there were still followers of the heretical Montanists in
Phrygia in the fourth century, as well as Novatianists.
In Isauria, a province of central Anatolia known for the unruliness of its people, Mitchell suggests
a Christian population of perhaps a third before 260 but a figure of 80 per cent was only reached in
the fourth century, when there was a major increase in Christian numbers after Constantines grant of
toleration. Thirteen bishops from Isauria attended the Council of Nicaea in 325. Just as noteworthy,
however, is the large number of cities in Asia Minor that show no evidence of Christianity at all. As
Mitchell concludes, the progress [of Christianity] was irregular and the map of Christian progress
resembles an irregular patchwork quilt, not a simply monochrome blanket.5 There are a number of
cases where determined pagan city councils resisted the spread of Christianity or were able to
challenge it effectively through backing the persecutions of the early fourth century.
Egypt was well settled with Christian communities: bishoprics stretched up along the Nile. Thanks
to its bone-dry climate and long tradition of literacy, Egypt is the major source of preserved early
Christian manuscripts including the oldest surviving fragments of the gospels and the Nag Hammadi
documents. Texts were sucked in from the rest of the empire by receptive audiences. Irenaeus
polemic against the heretics, which he wrote in Lyons, had turned up in Egypt within twenty years.
Most documents were in Greek but from the second and third centuries AD, Christian texts were
translated into Egyptian and transcribed in Greek letters the Coptic writings that became such a
feature of Egyptian Christianity and its liturgy and are still being produced today. The figures from an
analysis of Christian names from Egyptian papyri support the story of steady growth. They suggest
that about 12 per cent of the total population of Egypt perceived themselves as Christian by 280 and
17 per cent in 290. Oxyrhynchus, famous for its great cache of papyri found in the citys rubbish
dump, is known to have had two basilicas by the end of the third century. Following the grant of
toleration in 312, the Christian population jumped to 70 per cent by 325. While the Christian
population appears to have been sparser than that of many parts of Asia Minor, it was increasing
nonetheless. Eusebius describes in detail the agonies of immense numbers suffering martyrdom in
Egypt during the Diocletian persecution.
Other parts of the eastern empire show very little impact of Christianity at all. There are only six
recorded communities along the long coastline of Cyrene and only a few on the shores of the Black
Sea. Greece and the Balkans have surprisingly few foundations. The province of Dalmatia has only
one recorded community, and the large province of Achaea, which included Athens, only five. Origen
spoke of the Athenian church community as meek and quiet. The Christian congregations known to
Paul at Thessalonica, Corinth and Philippi have hardly any funerary evidence to suggest their
continued presence and it cannot be assumed. A letter from Paul did not guarantee the survival of its
recipients as a congregation.
Eusebius tells of Christianity spreading among Greeks and non-Greeks alike but the Latin west
shows the same picture of uneven growth. There are only three known clusters of communities in the
early fourth century. One centres on Carthage and its surrounding territories. Cyprian was able to
summon over eighty bishops to a local council, even if the evidence suggests many dioceses covered
little more than a single village. As Cyprians own story shows, Christianity had reached the higher
social classes here. Yet the concentration is not typical. Of the other provinces of North Africa,
Numidia is well represented but Mauretania has only one recorded community and the long coastal
sweep of Africa Proconsularis only four. African Christianity had developed a distinctive personality
and, as with most of the empire, was to see an explosion of growth in the fourth century, as well as
providing the background for the major schism of Donatism.
The church in Rome is poorly documented before the fourth century but the catacomb remains
confirm that communities were growing. In Rome, for instance, the catacomb of Peter and
Marcellinus records eleven thousand new burials in this period, extending its passageways by some
two kilometres. There were perhaps twenty-five churches in the city by 300. Bishop Cornelius of
Rome gathered some sixty bishops from Italy for a council in 251 less than Cyprian could attract to
his, but an indication that his authority was recognised locally at least. There were a number of
Christian communities along the coastline of Campania, between Rome and Naples. The size of the
two-halled basilica church at Aquileia in north-eastern Italy and the splendour of its floor mosaics,
all of which date to about 315, make it clear that there must have been a well-established
congregation there ready to be housed in such magnificence when toleration came.
The very earliest reference to any church in Spain comes in a letter to Spanish bishops written by
Cyprian as late as 256 but, by 300, a concentration of western bishoprics is to be found in Baetica in
the south of the country, the site of the Council of Elvira. Twenty-six communities are recorded while
in the neighbouring province of Lusitania there are only two, and only twenty-two in the vast province
of Tarraconensis. The whole of Gaul had only twenty-two recorded communities and most of what is
known about Christianity comes from the letter describing the martyrdoms in Lyons of 177 preserved
by Eusebius. In so far as the composition of the Lyons congregation can be reconstructed, it was made
up of Greek speakers from the east including a native of Pergamum and two Phrygians. The
inscription relating to Christ as the heavenly Fish echoes similar references and depictions in the
catacombs and Phrygia, underlining the links between the communities across the empire.
The vast majority of Christians were urban workers. Those artisans specifically mentioned on
funerary inscriptions include linen weavers, traders, mat makers, mule keepers, stone cutters and
tailors but there is a growing number of middle class occupations: small landowners, bailiffs on the
imperial estates and, at the higher end, the manager of the imperial dye factory at Tyre, a freed slave
who had risen to become chamberlain of the household of the emperor Commodus, and civil servants
in the households of both emperors and provincial governors. This is overwhelmingly a church of
artisans with a minority of wealthy and more literate leaders. There is some evidence, from the
gravestones of Phrygia, for instance, of growth outside the cities and it has been suggested that one
reason for the survival of so many Christians during the Diocletian persecutions is that they could
now find refuge in the countryside.
So can one pinpoint the reasons for Christian growth? The evidence of patchwork development of
Christianity in Anatolia, the flourishing of some communities, the failure of others to make an impact,
are a reminder that good leadership was probably vital for success. The historian may be frustrated
by Eusebius concentration on personalities at the expense of the nitty-gritty of everyday Christian
life, but he does make an important point. However much Cyprian and Tertullian complained of the
inadequacy of the bishops, there were still powerful men around asserting their authority within city
life. The third century was an age of social breakdown and some civic structures were certainly
weakened by the turnover of emperors and the repeated attacks of barbarian tribes on the empires
frontiers. Bishops were emerging as the men who could get things done. Increasingly, and Cyprian is
an excellent example, they were of higher social status and imbued with the traditions of civic
responsibility. Naturally some of them abused their positions (and presumably their communities
disintegrated, as happens in similar circumstances today) but the many references to bishops taking
charge of charitable work, distributing the collections and acting as arbiters in disputes, show that
they were fulfilling an important social function. There was a good reason to join a church for social
protection.
This could not have been the whole story. Christians were expected to cut themselves off from all
the religious rituals of civic life: a canon of Elvira required penance to be done for even watching a
sacrifice. Social cohesion was achieved through defining a community that stood apart from the rest
of society and promulgated its own values. It is interesting how often its opposition to abortion and
infanticide is mentioned in apologetic texts. The stress on sexual continence was another defining
factor. Again, the promise of eternal salvation must have played its part in fostering cohesion. In this
period, Christians assumed that their very membership of the church would ensure their place in
heaven. There was an extraordinary moment in Carthage in 252 where Cyprian actually welcomed a
plague because it would speed Christians more quickly to heaven (while Jews and pagans would
head to hell). Christian identity was reinforced by its rituals the solemn ceremony of initiation
through baptism and the weekly Eucharist. Baptism marked a symbolic transition after which sanctity
could be sustained through participation in the absorption of the body and blood of Christ.
An important development in the third century was the creation, or in many cases invention, of
histories for Christian communities. Some of these went back very far indeed. King Abgar of Edessa
was said to have communicated personally with Jesus and been converted by a disciple sent to him.
The apostles travelled widely to found churches Peter to Antioch and Rome, the apostle John to
Ephesus, the evangelist Mark to Alexandria. It was common for congregations to claim that their
founding bishop had been consecrated by an apostle. These claims were consolidated by traditions of
local martyrs. Edessa may have invented its earliest martyrs but there were many better documented
ones, in Carthage, Smyrna (Polycarp) and Lyons, for instance. Rome was surrounded by shrines
raised to their memory, either on the reputed place of their martyrdom Peter on the Janiculum Hill,
Paul on the road out to Romes port, Ostia, Agnes in Domitians stadium (now Piazza Navona) and
Lawrence on the Via Tiburtina or at their place of burial.
While the sources leave us with a picture of diverse Christianities in this period, it is possible,
perhaps largely through hindsight, to spot the emergence of an institutional framework with links
established between communities through the bishops. The spread of religious movements across the
empire was not uncommon; the Christians would have to confront the far-flung Mithraists and the
Manicheists as rivals in the fourth century. Yet Christians appear to have had a more coherent idea of
a universal church. When Paul of Samosata, the bishop of Antioch, was deposed by his neighbouring
bishops and clergy in 268 for his views that Christ was born a man but then united to God at his
baptism, the bishops sought support for their views by dictating a letter to the bishops of Alexandria
and Rome. They asked the bishops to write to Pauls replacement so as to establish communion with
him. One cannot talk of any real unity of the church at this time but the idea that Christians shared a
common purpose may have played its part in raising the status and improving the cohesion of
Christianity. A Christian travelling from one part of the empire to another would find a welcome in a
host community. Martyr cults also spread as the major Christian cities became the focus of
pilgrimages and relics were dispersed. A cloth which had touched the shrine of Peter or Paul became
part of an international currency of relics.

It is easy to exaggerate the success of Christianity by 300: 90 per cent of the empires population
were not Christian and there were vast areas of the empire where there is no community recorded. We
cannot assume that growth would have continued at a significant rate. There is no record of sustained
growth of Christianity in the Persian empire in the fourth century in fact, the church there was
persecuted as a reaction to Constantine granting toleration to his empires Christians and appears to
have declined. It was the sudden and unexpected boost of support from the emperor Constantine that
was the catalyst which transformed Christianity into a social and dynamic force in the empire. In
doing so it broke dramatically with its roots.
P ART THREE : THE IMPERIAL CHURCH
 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Motives of Constantine
LET ME NOW OBEDIENTLY SING ALOUD THE NEW SONG BECAUSE AFTER those terrifying darksome sights
and stories, I was now privileged to see and celebrate such things as in truth many righteous men and
martyrs of God before desired to see on earth and did not see, and to hear and did not hear a day
bright and radiant, with no cloud overshadowing it, shone down with shafts of heavenly light on the
churches of Christ throughout the world.1 So, in the final chapter of his History of the Church,
Eusebius rejoices at the toleration and patronage given to Christians by Constantine. Eusebius became
a confidant of Constantine, wrote speeches for him, and after his death composed an adulatory life of
his hero.
The transformation of the church that followed Constantines involvement still shapes Christianity
as we know it today. There is no knowing if the numbers of Christians would have continued to grow
if they had been left to themselves but now the numbers expanded so fast that Eusebius complained of
the hypocrisy of converts who had only joined because the going was good. Soon the churchs
authority figures, the bishops, were recruits to the service of the state. Their social and legal status
grew enormously as did their wealth. Vast churches, glittering with gold and mosaics, were to be
found in the major cities of the empire. Although the church continued to care for the poor, and was
used by the state to do so, the transfer of resources to prestige building projects proved permanent, as
walking through the streets of any medieval European city or viewing the megachurch complexes of
the modern United States shows.
The role the emperors played in defining church doctrine was to prove enormously important. It
was vital to have uniformity and good order although the church itself had no mechanism for
achieving, let alone enforcing, a consensus on the intractable theological problems that consumed the
energies of its more intellectual leaders. This was to be done by emperors first by Constantine but,
more effectively, by Theodosius in the 380s. Their interventions were followed by confrontations
with Judaism and paganism. Eventually a predominantly Christian state became established in both
halves of a disintegrating empire. It went hand in hand with transfer of interest from the gospels,
whose portrayal of a spiritual leader crucified by the Roman authorities fitted uneasily with the new
regime, to the Old Testament, which had far more texts supporting an empire whose survival
depended on success in war and, in so far as authority needed to be reinforced over a sinful
population, the letters of Paul. Augustines Paul became the cornerstone of western theology.

Constantine emerged from the breakdown of Diocletians system of four imperial rulers. When his
father, Constantius, died in York in 306, Constantine had been acclaimed as new emperor by his
troops. He had no right to accept the promotion but he was ruthless in his opportunism. He knew how
important it was to have the gods on his side: he soon had his court panegyrists proclaiming that as
Constantius had ascended to heaven, the heavens had opened and he had been welcomed there by
none other than Jupiter himself. Then the sun god Apollo had appeared in a vision to promise
Constantine thirty years of rule while the image of Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun, a cult popular
with his troops, appeared on his coins as late as 320. He claimed that his right to rule came from his
descent from an earlier emperor, Claudius Gothicus (26870). There is no evidence that Constantine
exhibited any early allegiance to Christianity although he certainly showed religious instincts which
tended towards monotheism.
 The new Augustus of the eastern empire, Galerius, was forced to acquiesce in Constantines status,
recognising him first as a Caesar and then as Augustus, one of the two senior emperors. Even when
Galerius finally succumbed to bowel cancer in 311, his successor, Licinius, accepted Constantine and
married Constantines half-sister to formalise a new imperial order. Constantines territory included
Britain, Gaul and Spain and he made his imperial headquarters on the northern border at Trier where
his audience hall still stands. To the south, in Italy, another usurpation had taken place. One
Maxentius, the son of Diocletians Augustus, Maximian, had been proclaimed emperor by the Roman
senate, and so ruled over Italy and, after defeating a rival, the African provinces. His usurpation was
never accepted by Constantine or his fellow emperors in the east. A showdown was inevitable.
In 312, Constantine, who had honed his military skills with campaigns against Germanic and
British tribes, led a carefully planned invasion of Italy. The north of Italy was secure behind him
when he reached the outskirts of Rome in October. Maxentius met Constantine on the ancient Via
Flaminia where it crossed the Tiber. He had replaced the Milvian Bridge with a bridge of boats,
taken up position beyond them and stood to fight. It was a disaster. Maxentius forces broke, the
bridge of boats collapsed as his men retreated back over it and Maxentius drowned. Constantine
entered Rome in triumph. His victory was trumpeted on the Arch (315) that still stands by the
Colosseum in Rome flaunting its reliefs of the successful campaign. The emperor is shown alongside
a chariot of the sun god that ascends to heaven while, in an inscription, the victory is attributed to the
the highest divinity.
However, other stories began to circulate. They suggested that it was not Jupiter, Apollo or even
the Unconquered God of the Sun who had brought victory but the God of the Christians. Lactantius,
close to Constantine as his sons tutor, told of a dream Constantine had had the night before the battle
in which he had been told to place a sign of Christ (presumably the Chi-Rho, the first two letters in
Greek of Christs name) on the shields of his men. He had obeyed and won his victory. Twenty-five
years later, a conflicting story appeared in Eusebius Life of Constantine. Eusebius claimed that
Constantine had told him under oath that some time before the battle a cross of light had appeared in
the sky to Constantine and his troops together with the words, By this sign you shall conquer. Christ
then appeared to tell Constantine to put Christian images on his standards.
The most likely explanation for these stories is that Constantine had already decided to bring
Christianity under the auspices of the state and realised that the best way of doing this was to
associate his dramatic victory with the Christian God. There was no precedent in the New Testament
for the association of Christ with war other than a single reference in the Book of Revelation to a
warrior, normally believed to be Christ, in a bloodstained garment on a white horse. When Eusebius
wrote up the battle he had to find texts in the Old Testament, among them the overwhelming of
Pharaohs chariots in the Red Sea, as a prophecy of the collapsed Milvian Bridge. So was born an
uneasy relationship between Christianity and the imperial state that relied heavily on Old Testament
texts.
In 313 Constantine met Licinius in Milan. Together they issued an Edict of Toleration which
extended to all in the east the same tolerance Constantine had already offered to Christians in the
west: an end of persecution, freedom to follow their own religion and, now, restitution of property.
The edict specifically recognised the right of all to follow their own cults in the hope that the highest
divinity, to whose worship we pay allegiance with free minds, may grant us in all things his wonted
favour and benevolence. The edict did nothing to privilege Christianity above other religious beliefs
but it acknowledged that continued persecution was fruitless and that Christians needed to be
welcomed fully into Roman society. This was the high point of religious toleration within the empire.
There was much more to Constantines Christianity than this. He soon showed that he was ready to
give positive support to the bishops. Such patronage was not unusual; emperors had always favoured
specific gods or used cults of their own personalities, Rome or the imperial family, as a means of
consolidating their rule. Constantine now relieved the clergy of all civic duties, including taxes, a
major concession, in the belief that the clergy shall not be drawn away by any deviation and
sacrifice from the worship that is due to the divinity for it seems that, rendering the greatest
possible service to the deity, they most benefit the state.2 Again this did not make Christianity the
imperial religion. Constantine remained unbaptised (although this was normal practice when it made
sense to leave the washing off of sins as close as possible to death) and he continued to use pagan
symbols, such as the image of the sun god on his arch in Rome. Although Eusebius was to present
every policy of the emperor as a sign of Christian commitment, many of Constantines later decrees
were phrased in terms of a neutral monotheism which pagans could interpret as no more than a
general support for a supreme deity. His laws on marriage were seen by Eusebius as Christian in
intent but they were typical of what any conservative Roman might support.3 Eusebius also claimed
that the emperor banned sacrificing, which was, in any case, in decline as a ritual, but it seems to
have continued and the claim may only reflect Eusebius hopes that Christianity had finally triumphed
over paganism.
Constantine, however, might have had a deeper personal commitment to Christ. There were
occasions when he lectured his court on the evils of polytheism, the importance of worshipping Christ
and the need to repent. The so-called Oration to the Saints, a speech that was probably composed in
Latin in the 320s and then translated into Greek for audiences in the east after he had seized power
there, may well be a standard speech he delivered to audiences he encountered on his progresses
around the empire but in it he attributes his good fortune as ruler to Providence and the protection of
Christ. Be it my special province to glorify Christ, as well by the actions of my life, as by that
thanksgiving which is due to him for the manifold and signal blessings which he has bestowed. The
Oration provides an important guide to Constantines thought in that it links polytheism to social
disorder. A single god was a more effective symbol of authority.4
Constantine could hardly challenge the polytheism of the vast majority of his subjects but he could
bolster the bishops. They were now important figures in their city communities at a time when other
authority figures were under pressure. So Constantine went beyond releasing them from civic duties
to boosting their powers in other ways. His church-building programme gave them control of local
patronage. Some bishops were given grain supplies to hand out to the poor, responsibilities that fitted
well with their traditional role as organisers of relief for their own congregations. They were granted
legal powers that extended to the right to free slaves on the same grounds as other magistrates and to
hear a wide range of cases. These moves were all the more effective because bishops were now so
well known in their cities and were often in office for years.
The integration of bishops within the legal and institutional structure of the empire extended to
include uniformity of belief and discipline within the church itself. As early as 313, a group of
bishops from the African provinces had petitioned Constantine for help. It was the unresolved issue
of how to deal with the traditores, those who had betrayed their faith under persecution. Out in the
country areas, hardline survivors of Diocletians persecution were determined to show no mercy to
those clergy who had lapsed and they refused to accept the validity of any of their sacraments, even
those administered before the persecutions. In the cities, and among those of higher social class, there
was a more relaxed atmosphere, forgiveness was thought possible and the validity of early
sacraments recognised. Battle lines were drawn, perhaps as much on social as doctrinal grounds.
Each group elected its own bishop Donatus for the hardliners and Caecilian for the moderates. At
first Constantine passed the petitions on to advisory councils of bishops meeting in Rome and Gaul,
but he gradually became more involved he enjoyed meeting petitioners in person and he was
instrumental in deciding against the Donatists. He even went back on his policy of toleration and there
was a short period of renewed persecution of the Donatists before he relented and let them be. In
Africa the imperial church, that of the Caecilianists, remained a minority drawn from the richer
classes in the cities, but they received the goodwill and patronage of the emperor. Constantine was
shaping a church ready to compromise with the state. For the Donatists, the empire continued as it had
always been, something marginal and often antagonistic to Christian life, and the martyrs created by
Constantines Christian state were as revered as the victims of earlier persecutions.
Constantines wider ambitions remained unsatisfied and he now set his sights on securing the
eastern empire. Licinius was gradually excluded from imperial decision-making, his head
disappeared from coins issued by Constantine and the annual appointments to the consulships were
now Constantines choices alone. In 324, as the relationship broke down, Constantine found the
excuse to invade the east. Once again the placing of the Chi-Rho on the imperial standards was said
to have brought success in two major battles. Constantine soon removed his rivals. The captured
Licinius was killed in 325 as was his ten-year-old son, Constantines own nephew. Worse was to
come. In 326, Constantine ordered the execution of his illegitimate son, Crispus. Crispus had proved
a worthy commander in his own right and had held a consulship. Later gossip, from pagan sources,
supplied the story that Constantines wife Fausta was jealous of Crispus preferment and feared that
her own legitimate sons would be passed over. So she falsely accused Crispus of trying to rape her.
Constantine accepted the story but was so appalled when he learned of the deception that he ordered
the drowning of Fausta in a scalding bath. It is also alleged that his mother Helena was involved and
one pagan report suggests that she was sent by her confessor on her famous pilgrimage to the Holy
Land as a penance.
As Constantine consolidated his control over his new territories he realised that disorder among
the Greek Christians was as widespread as it was in the west. The eastern empire was much more
heavily Christianised with some hundreds of bishops. Intellectual life was competitive and different
Christian communities and a mass of fringe groups such as the Manicheists vied with each other for
converts. If the bishops were to be used in support of Constantines rule, then their authority over
their subordinates had to be upheld. The bishop of Alexandria, Alexander, for instance, faced two
challenges. One was from a rival bishop, Melitius, who claimed he had been given the right to make
his own ordinations in the diocese by the previous bishop of Alexandria, Peter, during the
persecutions and he refused to surrender the privilege. The second was the famous confrontation with
Arius, a presbyter in the city itself.
Arius was a charismatic figure, with a popular appeal he expressed some of his teachings in
catchy tunes and he had a loyal following in the city. The roots of the controversy are tangled. Arius
claimed that he was representing traditional teaching in his views that Christ must, at some point,
have been a later, but distinct, creation of God the Father. Gods majesty made it impossible for him
to share his nature with anything in the material world while Christ, as an inferior if still divine
creation, could do so. Christs inferior status was confirmed by his own words in the gospels, the
frequent admissions that he only did the will of his Father who had sent him and whose purpose he
did not fully know. Alexander, in contrast, preached one Lord Jesus Christ, begotten out of the
Father, not in any bodily way but in an unutterable and inexplicable fashion.5 This was hardly clear.
It assumed that Jesus had always been part of the Godhead but was also begotten of his Father in a
way that Alexander could not explain. The historian Socrates, writing a hundred years later, records
that Arius challenged Alexander with the heresy of Sabellianism, that Jesus had been a temporary
manifestation of God. Naturally Alexander decided to bring Arius into line. He summoned the
Egyptian bishops to Alexandria and had them condemn him.
Arius refused to give in. He made off to the imperial city of Nicomedia where the bishop, one
Eusebius, who had developed similar ideas from a teacher they had shared, backed him and gathered
his own bishops in support. Arius also had the sympathy of the historian Eusebius, whose own
bishopric was the important coastal town of Caesarea, Herods foundation, where Origen had taught.
Eusebius had been strongly influenced by Origens theology and had absorbed the idea that Christ
was a later creation and subordinate to the Father (see p. 192). Another council of bishops meeting at
Antioch in 325 appears to have taken Alexanders side and condemned Eusebius of Caesarea as a
heretic.
For Constantine these were idle and trivial speculations and did not have anything to do with the
Divine law, leadership doctrines or heresies. They could be resolved by following the Divine
Commandment which enjoined on us all the duty of maintaining a spirit of Concord. However, in this
case, as Constantines adviser the Spanish bishop Ossius discovered when he visited the region, the
dispute was causing mayhem. Confusion everywhere prevailed: for one saw not only the prelates of
the churches engaged in disputing, but the people also divided, some siding with one party, and some
with the other. To so disgraceful an extent was this affair carried, that Christianity became a subject of
popular ridicule, even in the very theatres.6 Constantine had to abandon his instinct to let the bishops
sort things out for themselves and intervene directly. In 325 the bishops were summoned to the
imperial residence at Nicaea with transport laid on to convey them there. Constantine hoped to settle
not only the disputes over Arius but consolidate the authority of bishops and come to an agreed date
for Easter, an issue which was causing more upheaval with rival communities celebrating the feast on
different dates.
Those who assembled, probably between 200 and 250, although later legends fixed their number
at 318,7 reflected the spread of the church. The largest contingent, some hundred bishops, came from
Asia Minor, fifty arrived from Syria and Palestine and about twenty were from Egypt. Hardly any
bishops came from western Europe, the bishop of Rome pleading ill health and sending only
observers. Even so, the council could claim to be ecumenical, of the inhabited world. All views
were represented. Alexander came in person, of course, with his deacon Athanasius, a formidable
contributor to later debates on Arianism. Eusebius of Nicomedia, the metropolitan bishop for Nicaea,
spoke for Arius who, as a mere presbyter, could not participate. Eusebius of Caesarea was also there
and left one of the fuller accounts of the council. It must have been an extraordinary gathering. Many
bishops were said to carry the marks of their beatings and tortures at the hands of the persecutors.
Now they were being welcomed by the emperor who, dressed in glorious robes and glittering with
diamonds, would have been the nearest thing to divinity they had ever seen.
Medieval representations of the council show Constantine dominating the proceedings, as could be
expected of the host and benefactor of all those seated before him. He could hardly miss the
opportunity to stage-manage the assembly to achieve his ends. His instinct was always for order. In a
letter to the peoples of the eastern empire the year before, he had described Christianity as the Law,
the basis of a regulated way of life under the auspices of a single god. Whatever the theological issue,
Alexander as the established bishop of the largest city in the east was more likely to have his backing
than a presbyter who stirred up trouble by peregrinating through the eastern Mediterranean. The trick
was to find a formula that supported Alexanders authority but around which the bishops with
different perspectives could gather. Constantines opening speech was masterly in framing the agenda
to this end. He said nothing about theology other than claiming that the perils of dissension were a
greater threat than war. The settlement of the issues would not only please God but would be of
immense favour to the emperor. Anyone who stepped out of line would be sure of Constantines
anger.
Yet some kind of theological consensus had to be forged. A major speech was given by Eusebius
of Caesarea. He had the reputation for being the most learned man of his generation and he must have
wished to restore his standing after his condemnation in Antioch. It was a carefully phrased oration
that talked glowingly of Christs divinity without specifically saying how and when he had been
created. It was enough for his condemnation as a heretic to be overlooked. Yet the creed he suggested
seems to have failed to convince because it left the central issue, of whether Christ had existed
eternally or as a later creation, unresolved.8 Arius would have been able to claim that there was
nothing in the formula with which he disagreed. Eusebius of Nicomedia, perhaps the senior bishop
there, aroused greater anger when, according to one report, he produced a document which backed
Arius. There was now confusion as charge and counter charge followed each other until Constantine
intervened. As Eusebius reports, he tried, in halting Greek, to bring about unity, urging all towards
agreement, until he had brought them to be of one mind and one belief on all the matters in dispute.
His means of doing so was a bombshell. He suggested, possibly on his own initiative, perhaps at the
instigation of Ossius, that the correct way of describing the relationship between Father and Son was
to declare them homoousios, of one substance. The motive was probably to isolate Arius through
inserting a phrase that his supporters would never accept.
It was, in fact, a clumsy way of expressing support for Alexander. The term homoousios was not to
be found in scripture and quite what it meant, other than to express some kind of very close
relationship between Father and Son which precluded a later act of creation, was difficult to define.
Worse still, Paul of Samosata had used the term to describe the relationship between Christ as logos
and God, and he had been declared heretical in the 260s. While one might be able to make some
distinction between Pauls use of the word and its use at Nicaea, the odour of heresy lingered.
These reservations disappeared in the excitement of the moment. The cajoling of Constantine, his
insistence on agreement and the sheer glamour of the occasion must have swept almost all to
consensus. Not only was the homoousios formula accepted but a number of anathemas aimed at Arius
were also included in the creed that was passed. Any claim that there was a time that Christ had not
been, that he was created, that he was of a different substance from God or that he could alter or
change from the state in which he had been eternally, was condemned. Almost everyone signed up to
it. Eusebius of Caesarea, who joined the majority, was deeply unsettled by the whole occasion and
had to write to his congregation explaining why he had assented to the homoousios formula. He
glosses over the problem as if it were of little import but his embarrassment is obvious. Arius and
two bishops were formally excommunicated and Eusebius of Nicomedia was also deposed from his
bishopric, apparently after he refused to sign the anathemas at the end of the creed.
 Of course, as with many decisions made under pressure and in a charged atmosphere, as was
certainly the case at Nicaea, the radical nature of what had been done became clear only when the
bishops had departed. Constantine had achieved a praiseworthy consensus in the short term but with a
formula that began to dissolve soon afterwards. The council, writes Mark Edwards, had canonised a
term [ homoousios] which being new, unbiblical and uninterpreted, could hardly fail to irritate the
conscience.9 There were immense philosophical problems in understanding how the two divine
personalities related to each other if they were of the same substance but also distinct as Father and
Son. Another term inserted during the debate was begotten, in that Christ was begotten, not made.
Here again the aim was to condemn Arius idea that Christ was a later creation. So make was
rejected but some form of replacement had to be found. Begotten was chosen, but surely begetting
involved an independent act of creation? The desire to overwhelm Arius had led to the sacrifice of
theological good sense.
No one knows where the basic text of the Nicene creed originates; one report suggests Palestine,
another Asia Minor. It was probably provided at short notice, possibly by Eusebius of Caesarea who
did indeed claim that it was his local creed. The final version, with its additions, was compromised
by the overwhelming desire to isolate Arius. One of the anti-Arian anathemas, the condemnation of
the idea that the Son of God might be another hypostasis, or personality, within the Godhead, left it
unclear whether Jesus was distinct from the Father at all in other words it smacked of Sabellianism.
More reflection would probably have avoided this. Nor was there any assertion of a Trinity. The only
reference to the Holy Spirit was And I believe in the Holy Spirit. The assembled bishops had
missed their chance to describe any relationship between the Spirit and Father and Son. One has to
agree with Richard Hanson, the author of the fullest study of the affair, that the Creed was a mine of
potential confusion and consequently most unlikely to be a means of ending the Arian controversy.10
All this is understandable in the context of a council that was concerned more with backing the
authority of the bishops and the state than with theological precision. No one could have imagined that
the creed, even when modified at the Council of Constantinople in 381, would become the core of the
Christian faith.

The following is the creed passed at Nicaea:

We believe in one God Father Almighty Maker of all things, seen and unseen:
And in one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, begotten as only-begotten of the Father, that is of
the substance [ ousia] of the Father, God from God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten
not made, consubstantial [ homoousios] with the Father, through whom all things came into
existence, both things in heaven and things on earth: who for us men and for our salvation came
down and was incarnate and became man, suffered and rose again on the third day, ascended into
the heavens, is coming to judge the living and the dead:
And in the Holy Spirit.
But those who say there was a time when he did not exist, [e.g. Arius and his followers] and
Before being begotten he did not exist, and that he came into being from non-existence, or who
allege that the Son of God is of another hypostasis or ousia, or is alterable or changeable, these the
Catholic and Apostolic Church condemns.
 It did not take long for Constantine to realise that the additions caused further confusion in the
church. To his credit he sought to bring Arius back into the fold. He met the presbyter himself,
encouraged him to sign an acceptable statement of beliefs and urged the new bishop of Alexandria,
Athanasius, to readmit him to the church. Athanasius refused, to the fury of Constantine, who banished
him from his see and exiled him to Gaul. Constantine had little time for those who spurned
compromise. The bishop of Constantines new capital Constantinople had to be asked to carry out the
ceremony. He was about to comply but on the way to the ceremony Arius collapsed and died in a
public latrine. His opponents saw this as the vengeance of God on a heretic. Still Constantine
persisted in his rapprochement. It was none other than Eusebius of Nicomedia who, restored to his
see, administered baptism to Constantine as he lay dying in 337, so much had Constantine reversed
the theological stance of his own council.
The other canons of the Council of Nicaea show Constantines concern to bring greater order to a
church. Each area was confirmed as having a metropolitan bishop in Rome, Alexandria, Carthage,
or Antioch, for instance to whom other bishops of the region were subservient. In Alexandria,
Melitius existing ordinations were accepted but he could make no more without the approval of
Alexander. Bishops could not move from see to see. Once they had been appointed they had to stay
where they were. A tolerant attitude was granted to those who had lapsed even those who had
sacrificed would be readmitted to the church after a period of exclusion followed by penance.
Although the matter is only recorded in a letter of Constantine, there was also agreement that the date
of Easter would be fixed according to the custom of Rome (where the date was decided with
reference to the lunar calendar) rather than Asia. The Asians still tied the feast to the Jewish
Passover, an interesting example of the continuing Christian links with Jewish tradition, with the
result that Easter usually failed to fall on a Sunday. Constantine, in contrast, rejected a feast which
was celebrated in accordance with the practice of the Jews Having sullied their own hands with a
heinous crime [the death of Jesus], such men are, as one would expect, mentally blind. His
championing of Christianity, tolerant though it was at one level, was already resulting in the exclusion
of other religious beliefs.
One of Constantines first initiatives was to commemorate his success at the Milvian Bridge with a
triumphal building. This was to mark his new commitment to Christianity and provide a suitable
setting for the bishop of Rome. Sensitive as he had to be to the continuing vitality of pagan life in the
ceremonial centre of Rome, his first church was built on imperial land at the southern edge of the city.
The form of the church of Christ the Redeemer, now St John Lateran, was conventional, the basilica
an all-purpose meeting hall which could be used for audiences or the administration of law. Its apse,
traditionally highly decorated, had acted as the backdrop for emperors or magistrates and the
cathedra, or ceremonial chair, of the bishop was placed there, at the eastern end as was the custom
for pagan buildings. The people of Rome would not have been offended by the building style itself, or
even the opulence of its decoration, but they must have wondered what ceremonies went on there. An
octagonal baptistery, still intact today, was placed alongside the basilica. Close by, in the remains of
an imperial palace, Constantines mother Helena had her own church (now Santa Croce in
Gerusalemme). It was later to enshrine the titulus, the board hammered to the True Cross, which she
had claimed to have unearthed on her pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The battered piece of wood is still
on display although the legend that she found the cross itself is not recorded before 395.
It was on this pilgrimage that Helena had put in hand shrines in Bethlehem and on the Mount of
Olives, the traditional site of the ascension. Constantine had already shown great interest in the Holy
Land. He had ordered the clearing of a site in Jerusalem where rumour suggested pagan buildings had
been placed above the tomb of Christ. As if by a miracle a cave emerged from the debris. A vast
church of the Holy Sepulchre, much praised by Eusebius who visited the Holy Land himself, was
commissioned. It was probably the first time that a church had been surmounted by a cupola, a style
that was soon to become pervasive with glittering examples in Antioch (the Golden Octagon initiated
by Constantine himself before his death) and Constantinople (Santa Sophia, possibly Constantines
commission but not completed, in its first version, until 360).
Another initiative of Constantine involved building churches over the burials of martyrs. On the
Vatican Hill in Rome, the presumed resting place of Peter had been honoured since the late second
century and Constantine ordered a great basilica to be placed on the site, the first St Peters, with
transepts so that there was a large area around the shrine itself. This was another architectural
innovation that was to become standard in large Christian churches. Other shrines outside the walls of
Rome attributed to Constantine commemorate the burial places of St Lawrence and Sant Agnese on
the Via Nomentana. All these churches were given fine decoration in gold and mosaic, and sumptuous
fittings.11
Once, when he was asked about his relationship to the church, Constantine replied that he was a
bishop for those outside the church, not for those already inside, and it is true that he usually kept his
distance from the institution. The bishops attended him, not he their churches. They often offended him
by their intransigence. You, the bishops, do nothing but that which encourages discord and hatred
and, to speak frankly, which leads to the destruction of the human race, was one remarkable outburst.
Constantines foundation of Constantinople maintained the distance. Although strategic
considerations must have predominated in his choice of the small Greek city of Byzantium as his new
eastern capital, the emperor showed little interest in creating a Christian city there. (Byzantium had no
known Christian heritage and did not even provide a bishop for the council at Nicaea in 325). He
followed Greek rituals when setting out the new foundations, brought in pagan statues from as far
afield as Rome to line the streets (to the puzzlement of his biographer, Eusebius), while an image of
himself alongside a figure of Tyche, the pagan goddess of chance, was paraded around the
hippodrome on the inaugural day in 330. A statue of Constantine was given a halo as if he still
conceived of himself as some sort of sun god. The temple of the protecting goddess Rhea remained in
place and it was only gradually, after the emperors death, that she was transcended by a cult of the
Virgin Mary. The first churches in Constantinople were dedicated to such spiritual abstractions as
Wisdom (Santa Sophia), Peace (Sant Irene) and the Holy Power. There was a church dedicated to
the Holy Apostles, the dedication marked by twelve symbolic tombs. However, Constantine
announced that this would be his mausoleum and he would be buried there as the Thirteenth Apostle.
The appropriation of this title bordered on blasphemy but was another reflection of the way in which
Christianity was being transformed by his support.
These ambiguities of Constantines reign have made it difficult to assess his religious beliefs.
Eusebius, in a panegyric of Constantine, delivered to the emperor in person in 336, describes him as
invested with a semblance of heavenly sovereignty He directs his gaze above, and frames his
earthly government according to the pattern of that Divine original, feeling strength in its conformity
to the monarchy of God. Constantine, Eusebius went on, was above all forms of emotion and desire,
free of cruelty and any kind of base feeling. In truth, there is no evidence for any commitment from
Constantine to building a heavenly kingdom on earth, still less for any personal piety. Constantines
relationship with Christ will always remain unclear but it certainly did not temper his ambition to
destroy his rivals or restrain the brutality with which he eliminated them. In many of his
pronouncements, Christ appears only as a symbol of order and unity, Gods only begotten,
preexistent Word, the great High Priest of the mighty God, elder than all time and every age, as
Eusebius put it. The human Jesus of the gospels is missing.
In fact, in his panegyrical Oration of 336, Eusebius comes close to claiming that Constantine is the
temporal equivalent of Christ. While Christ is the Preserver of the universe who orders these
heavens and earth, and the celestial kingdom, consistently with his Fathers will, Constantine fulfils
the same role on earth. The reign sees the inauguration of the Byzantine concept of the Christian ruler,
appointed as such by God. Gods appreciation of his emperor is shown through the granting of
military victory and the effective control of his territories: the only Conqueror among the
Emperors of all time to remain Irresistible and Unconquered, Ever-conquering and always brilliant
with triumphs over enemies, so Godbeloved and Thriceblessed, so truly pious and complete in
happiness, that with utter ease he governed more nations than those before him, and kept his
dominions unimpaired to the end. Roman imperialism and Christianity have merged. The church
gained enormously from the experience but the carpenters son who had died as a rebel on the cross
now risked being forgotten in the transformation of Christians from outsiders to insiders housed in
rich buildings and tied in with the successes of the empire in war.
 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Debating the Nature of God
THE CHURCH DESPERATELY NEEDED NEW TALENT TO MEET THE MANY demands that Constantine had
placed on it. The release of the clergy from the heavy burdens of local taxation and patronage meant
that the class who most contributed these, the curiales, was now attracted to Christianity. Many of its
members were used to administration, overseeing building projects and distributing the grain supplies
to the poor and all these roles were increasingly the preserve of the church. This was also a highly
educated class. Philosophical argument was at the core of traditional education and converts from
paganism now had a new set of intellectual challenges to engage them. The years between 312 and
381, when the emperor Theodosius imposed doctrinal uniformity on the empire, are fascinating for
the way in which some of the finest minds of the period grappled with the problem posed by Nicaea,
that is how to define the relationship between God the Father and Jesus the Son.
In traditional histories of the church, it was, and in some cases still is, taught that Nicaea had
promulgated a creed which reflected the truth, even the established tradition of the church, and this
was subverted by Arian heretics until Nicaea was reasserted by the assembled bishops at the
Council of Constantinople, called by Theodosius in 381. This view, which originated in the accounts
of the winners in the debate, such as Athanasius and Jerome, will no longer do. Nicaea was a
muddled formula, adopted in the heat of the moment to achieve the political purpose of isolating
Arius and this was recognised, not least by Constantine, as soon as the dust had settled. The church
historian Socrates, writing a century after Nicaea with access to documents now lost, had letters of
the bishops before him in which they expressed their confusion over the term homoousios.
It was hard enough to make a philosophically coherent case for the pre-existence of Christ but
even more difficult to say with any authority when this pre-existence might have begun. While there
was a wealth of relevant New Testament texts, in the gospels, where Jesus talked about his
relationship with the Father, and in the letters of Paul, where the apostle expressed his own thoughts,
these were far too varied to forge into any kind of coherent theology. The twenty-seven texts of the
New Testament had not been selected for their compatibility on this question and everyone could find
passages from scripture to support their views.
One of the reasons, in fact, that theological debate became so heated and incapable of resolution
was that many of the issues involved had never been contemplated by any of the Old or New
Testament writers and texts were distorted into meanings that were never intended. The chance that a
single word from the scriptures would ever be able to encompass its complexity of a divine Fathers
relationship to his divine Son was remote. When a term such as homoousios, which was not even to
be found in scripture, was imposed on the discussion, matters became even more convoluted. There
would always be something artificial about the debates that followed. It was the historian Socrates
who described the Nicene debates as like a battle fought at night, for neither party appeared to
understand distinctly the grounds on which they calumniated one another.
The theologians of the early church were all subordinationists, in that they believed Jesus was, in
some way, subordinate to the Father. Subordinationism was strong because it had a mass of support
from scripture, from the Old Testament, through the gospels and including the letters of Paul. It also
fitted in well with Platonism, which now provided the philosophical backbone to Christian theology.
Arius conception of the Trinity, in which the Holy Spirit was subordinate to the Son who was, in his
turn, subordinate to the Father echoed Platos hierarchy of the Forms.
 Those who still supported the Nicene creed of 325 faced a formidable theological challenge as
they could hardly renounce the terms homoousios and begotten without rejecting the creed
altogether, yet these two terms seemed to clash with each other. How could an entity of one substance
beget another of the same substance without diminishing itself or, if not, proclaiming its superiority to
the one begotten? Did not begetting suggest that God was involved in some kind of sexual activity?
Were not fathers always of higher status than their sons? These problems proved so intractable that, in
the short term, the subordinationist mainstream resumed its flow. Yet the story of the next fifty years is
one in which a counterattack against the subordinationists, eventually supported by a determined
emperor, Theodosius, led to the reassertion of Nicaea as the orthodox faith of the empire.
There were a number of smaller councils in the 340s and 350s and they were mostly
representative of the subordinationist position. It was only in the Latin-speaking west that any
sympathy was shown for a formula akin to Nicaea, one that talked of the equal majesty of Father and
Son but the west was still isolated and Christianity much less popular there than it was in the Greek-
speaking world.
One of the more impressive expressions of the mainstream subordinationist view is to be found in
a creed drawn up by a small council of bishops at Sirmium (in the Balkans) in 357. The participating
Greek-speaking bishops refused to endorse any formula relating to the creation of Jesus. It is clear
that only the Father knows how he begot his Son, and the Son how he was begotten by the Father was
their sensible response. They were wise enough to recognise that this was an issue beyond human
knowledge.
The bishops went on to reject the word homoousios on the grounds that it had never appeared in
scripture. Instead, it seemed obvious to them that the Father was superior to Jesus. It cannot be
doubted by anyone that the Father is greater in honour, in dignity, in glory, in majesty, in the very name
of Father and that the Son is subjected in common with all the things which the Father subjected to
him. One of the key points in the subordinationist position, reiterated in this creed, was that God
could not suffer. If Jesus Christ was one in substance with the Father then he would not be able to
suffer either. So he had to be inferior to the Father at the very least in the capacity to suffer for
mankind on the cross. The possibility of a valid salvation through his agonies could only be ensured if
he was of a different, less elevated, substance than God the Father. This remained one of the strongest
arguments against Nicaea. The creed of Sirmium was, in short, a coherent statement of
subordinationist belief that appeared to be reconcilable with the scriptures and human salvation.
The compelling quality of subordinationism is well illustrated by the missionary journeys carried
out by Ulfilas. Ulfilas was the son of Christian parents who had been captured by the Goths and he
had been brought up among a Gothic tribe settled north of the Danube, the boundary of the empire. He
spoke both Gothic (a now extinct Germanic language) and Greek and so was able to bridge the two
cultures, his Greekness being sufficient for him to be consecrated as a bishop by Eusebius of
Nicomedia (probably in 3401). He then went off to work as a missionary among the Goths until he
was driven back into the empire when one of the Gothic kings began a persecution of Christians.
Ulfilas now worked with Goths settled in the empire and he produced a Gothic translation of the
Bible, remarkable in that he left out some of the most warlike texts of the Old Testament on the
grounds that his congregations needed no further encouragement to be warriors! Ulfilas was a
convinced subordinationist. In a creed attributed to him, he states that the Holy Spirit is but the
minister of Christ subordinate in all things to the Son and the Son [is] subordinate and obedient in
all things to his God and Father. So all the converted Goths became subordinationists and remained
so for centuries, long after the empire had turned back to Nicaea.
One reason for the success of subordinationism in the middle years of the fourth century was that
all three of Constantines sons, Constantine II, Constans and Constantius, were subordinationists.
Their joint rule did not last long and by 351 Constantius had emerged as sole ruler of the empire.
While he did not persecute pagans, Constantius wished to unite the Christians of his empire around a
single subordinationist creed. He called on a group of bishops to advise him and they drew up the
Dated Creed, so-called because the date, 22 May 359 in the western calendar, was inscribed on it.
The creed, like that of Sirmium, renounced homoousios. Instead Jesus was described as the Son of
God, distinct from Him but begotten before all ages, presumably therefore at some early point in
the process of creation. The difficulties of having to explain how a Father and his begotten Son could
exist eternally without a moment when the Son was unbegotten were thus avoided. The creed went on
to describe how the Son had come down to earth to fulfil the will of his Father and then was taken up
to heaven after his crucifixion to be seated at the right hand of the Father. As a replacement for
homoousios, the creed declares that the acceptable terminology is that the Son is homoios [like]
the Father in all respects, as the Holy Scriptures also declare and teach. There is a short statement of
belief in the Holy Spirit but the Spirit is not included with Father and Son in a Trinity.
Constantius now called two councils of bishops in the hope that he would obtain the support of the
church for the Dated Creed. One, of western bishops, some 400 strong, met at Ariminum in Italy, the
other, with about 160 participants, met at Seleucia Isauria (in modern Turkey). Constantius was taken
aback by the outcome. The bishops at Seleucia brought many of their personal antagonisms with them,
quarrelled over every term in the creed and spent most days in divided sessions. The western bishops
rejected the creed as deviating too far from Nicaea. Constantius was forced into acting firmly. The
councils were closed down, a further gathering of bishops was summoned to Constantinople and here,
in 360, Constantius pushed through his Dated Creed. The subordinationist Homoian terminology had
now received official recognition and one might assume that the Nicene creed was dead. However,
any hopes that Constantius had of sustaining his own creed vanished when he died in 361 and was
succeeded by his pagan nephew, Julian.
These debates are depressing in the conceptual nit-picking and personal antagonisms which they
reveal. One can see why a term such as homoios was selected in the hope of gathering a consensus
around it, but it was hopelessly vague and few could give it unequivocal support. One only had to ask
in what specific ways the Son was like the Father and in what ways he was not to launch an
interminable debate. It was at the Seleucia council that one group suggested homoiousios, not of the
same substance but like in substance, to describe the relationship but this proved no more
acceptable. The crucial point was that no single term would ever be adequate because there were
was no coherent experience or empirical evidence on which to base it. Constantius had shown that
only the imposition of a formula from above would bring peace.
The very process of debate was challenged by Athanasius, the turbulent bishop of Alexandria who
had refused Constantines demand to readmit Arius to the church. Athanasius had been restored to his
see in Alexandria in 346 and he presented himself as the champion of the embattled Nicene cause. He
was not an intellectual and distrusted those who brought pagan philosophy into theology; their
speculations were no more than fancies of human invention as he put it in an episcopal letter of 352.
Only the scriptures counted. Had not Christ commanded his disciples to call him alone their teacher
(Matthew 23: 810)? The path to truth lay in clearing ones mind of any sensual desire and then
relying on faith in the words of Christ.
 Athanasius provided a figurehead in the Egyptian monk Anthony who had lived for decades in the
Egyptian desert. In Athanasius Life of Anthony, Anthony is presented as an unlettered man, a
committed Nicene who rejects learning but who confounds philosophers by sheer force of personality
whenever they come out to the desert to debate with him. The Life of Anthony circulated widely,
inspiring many others, including Augustine. It is ironic that letters of the real Anthony have been
discovered which show that, in contrast to the fabricated anti-intellectual of Athanasius, he was well
educated and able to write profoundly on asceticism.
Athanasius theology was rooted in his personal horror at the sinfulness of humankind. So
desperate was humanitys need for salvation, he claimed, that God had to present an emanation of
Himself, as the Son, to ensure redemption. A created intermediary would never be up to this awesome
task. So when we see the Son, we see the Father (drawing on John 14:9). Athanasius strengthened
his Nicene position by relying on those few texts which supported his own view, notably John 10:30,
I and the Father are one, ignoring those which differed from it and castigating his opponents with
sweeping polemic.
While in his early works Athanasius used only terms from scripture to describe the relationship
between Father and Son, eventually, in the tract De decretis written in 356 or 357, he revived the
term homoousios. The catalyst appears to have been another sentence of exile, this time at the hands
of Constantius who had been urged by subordinationist bishops to replace such a prominent opponent.
(Athanasius took refuge in the Egyptian desert.) Athanasius now grasped that he would clarify his
position and rally what support he had if he unashamedly returned to the Nicene formula. He made
one important advance on Nicaea. He recognised that the status of the Holy Spirit had been left
unacknowledged in the Nicene creed and he insisted that it must be given some form of higher status
alongside Father and Son.
Athanasius position was strengthened in two ways. The first was his continuing contact with the
bishops he had met during his first exile in the west. We are handicapped by our lack of knowledge of
western theology in this period. In the eyes of Greek contemporaries, it did not amount to much: You
will not find that any one of the western nations have any great inclination for philosophy or geometry
or studies of that sort, was the dismissive comment of the emperor Julian on the matter and many
Greeks argued that Latin did not have sufficient subtlety as a language to deal with theological issues.
One recent exhaustive study of the Nicene disputes has to admit that our knowledge of Latin
Christology and Trinitarian theology in the west between 250 and 360 is extremely limited and
certainly not such that we can make certain judgements about its overall character.1
What fragmentary evidence survives suggests that the western bishops did believe in a Trinity in
which Father, Son and Holy Spirit co-existed in some form of a single Godhead. This could be
equated with Athanasius Nicene theology. The most sophisticated attempt by a Latin theologian to go
further was made by Hilary, bishop of Poitiers. Hilary is a rare example of a westerner who
understood enough Greek to read Athanasius in the original. He created a Latin terminology for a
Nicene Trinity that was persuasive enough to attract a group of western bishops who were
sympathetic to Nicaea. In the 370s they were to receive a formidable boost from the support of
Ambrose of Milan, the dominant figure in the western church in the late fourth century.
Secondly, Athanasius realised that the best form of defence was attack. If one argued for the
primacy of scripture over philosophy, then the subordinationists held the advantage through the mass
of texts that supported their position. Paradoxically Athanasius, who claimed to put scripture before
philosophy, was acutely vulnerable if the debate was rooted in the scriptures. So he hit on the device
of classifying all subordinationists as followers of Arius and then lambasting all as heretics. Tract
after tract followed against the Arians. Here Athanasius was at his most unscrupulous. Anyone who
opposed him on political or religious grounds was declared to be an Arian. The devil was said to
have inspired the Arians use of scripture. The Arians were so wicked that they could only be
compared to the Hydra, the monster whose severed head spawned a hundred others. They were no
better than Jews or corrupted by the philosophy of the pagans. The cumulative effect of this invective
was so great that the dispute became known as the Arian controversy, even though Arius had been
only one representative of the subordinationist tradition. It did nothing to raise Athanasius reputation
as a theologian among his contemporaries. This was power politics not philosophical debate.
Meanwhile, the empire was undergoing dramatic change and disruption. Julian, who succeeded
Constantius in 361, had been born a Christian but the squabbling over doctrine repelled him. The
historian Ammianus Marcellinus tells us that he believed that Christian infighting was so bitter that
the religion would simply destroy itself. He returned to the old gods. In his Contra Galilaeos
(Against the Galileans) Julian used his considerable knowledge of the scriptures to highlight their
contradictions. Why is there no recognition in the synoptic gospels of Jesus divinity, for instance?
The use of Old Testament prophecies as harbingers of Christ is arbitrary and unjustified. Why did
God create Eve if he knew that she would thwart his plans for creation? Within this critique, Julian
made a sophisticated plea for religious toleration, on the grounds that each culture needed to define
the supreme divinity in its own way.
Julian withdrew the right of Christians to teach outside their churches and revived a variety of
pagan cults but it is unlikely that he would ever have displaced the church. His own philosophy was
too intellectual and an exuberant polytheism was too amorphous to have created an effective anti-
Christian force. In any case Julian was killed while campaigning against the Persians in 363 and his
successor, a staff officer Jovian who was acclaimed by the army, was a Christian. Jovian himself did
not last long he died only eight months into his reign after he had been forced to make a humiliating
surrender of territory to the Persian empire yet Christianity was restored to its position as the
favoured religion of the empire and all future emperors were to be Christian.
There survives an important oration made before Jovian by a pagan orator, Themistius. Themistius
had two concerns, the fear that a restored Christianity would lead to a backlash against pagans and a
deep anxiety that Christian infighting was undermining the stability of the empire. He pleaded for
mutual tolerance. Themistius stressed the impossibility of anyone, an emperor included, controlling
the human soul. Persecution of the body could never destroy the freedom that was intrinsic to its
identity. Instead God had implanted a favourable disposition to piety in human minds but had left
each to follow its own path. God actually enjoyed being worshipped in a number of ways, a positive
appreciation of the tolerance of God that later disappeared from western thought. In any case,
Themistius went on, a society was only healthy if it allowed free competition between individuals
and ideas.
This freedom to debate was honoured by the emperors who succeeded Jovian: a tough army
general Valentinian I, who ruled over the western empire between 364 and 375, and his brother
Valens who assumed responsibility for the east. Valentinian was reputed to be Nicene in his
sympathies but he refused to impose his views on the church so long as individual bishops kept good
order. When bishops did ask him for support, he simply told them that it was none of his business how
the church was run. Valens was more openly partisan in his case towards the Homoian, Christ as
like the Father, creed imposed by Constantius in 360. However, he recognised that any arbitrary
suppression of Nicene bishops was likely to be counter-productive. He tolerated the ageing
Athanasius, removing him briefly in 365 but then allowing him to return to his see for his final years
(Athanasius died in 373). Effective Nicene bishops such as Basil of Caesarea (the capital of
Cappadocia) were left in place.
This meant that discussion could flourish. In view of what was to follow in the 380s these years
were the swansong of creative theology in the ancient world. The three most famous theologians of
the period are the Cappadocian Fathers, Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil of Caesarea and Basils brother,
Gregory of Nyssa. Their achievement lay in their ability to use Greek philosophy to develop a
terminology within which a Nicene Trinity could be expressed. While Athanasius might have led the
onslaught against subordinationism, the Cappadocian Fathers gave the Nicene cause intellectual
respectability.
All three were steeped in pagan philosophy. Basil even wrote a tract urging all Christians to
master pagan texts before they embarked on the study of the scriptures.2 To grasp some idea of their
learning one can spot the allusions to classical literature in the works of Gregory of Nazianzus. From
Homer, in the eighth century BC, through to Plutarch, in the second century AD, almost every major
author, including the historians such as Herodotus and Thucydides, the poets, the philosophers
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and the playwrights are represented. Gregory has read deeply in Philo
and Origen as well as the scriptures. When one reads Gregorys Theological Orations of 380 one is
also struck by his range and consummate use of analogy. He meditates on the human mind, ranging
over the problems of communication between parent and child, the transmission of sound from one
mind to another, how the mind can be simultaneously self-reflective and imaginative enough to tour
the universe. He speculates on the process of human growth within the womb, how first the soul
becomes established in the body, then the intellect becomes part of the soul and finally the ability to
reason becomes attached to the intellect.
The Cappadocians showed great respect for Athanasius as a battering ram for the Nicene cause
even if they could not warm to his writings. They could hardly approve of his open rejection of the
pagan philosophy that they so enjoyed. It is not clear where their acceptance of Nicaea originated but
the catalyst may have been a confrontation between Basil and Eunomius, one of the most interesting
Christian intellectuals of the period. Eunomius, the son of a poor farmer from Cappadocia, prided
himself on his use of reason and the precision with which he analysed issues. His conclusions were
shocking to many. Eunomius argued that even the nature of the Godhead could be understood through
reason and it was impossible to conceive of the substance of God being shared in any way with any
other entity. So Eunomius rejected the Nicene formula completely and instead emphasised the radical
differences between the Father and the Son. He highlighted the obedience of the Son, who was the
perfect agent for all the creative activity and decisions of the Father. Among these creations was the
Holy Spirit who was thus at the head of the created order in the material world. In 360 Eunomius and
his followers had been condemned by Constantius. They had positioned themselves well outside his
formula of homoios. However, undaunted by imperial disfavour, they set up their own groups of
bishops in a sweep of dioceses from Constantinople to Libya.
Basil is known to have debated with the Eunomians in 359 and in the mid-360s he wrote a number
of tracts Contra Eunomium. It was as if their radicalism pushed him towards Nicaea. Furthermore,
Basil was concerned in particular to bring the Holy Spirit into the Godhead and, in contrast to the
Eunomians, in some form of equality with Father and Son. His most enduring work is his On the Holy
Spirit of 375, a much more sophisticated work than that of Athanasius its terminology reappears in
the revised version of the Nicene creed which the bishops drew up at the Council of Constantinople
in 381. Basil argues that the gift of the Spirit can only be received through rejecting the passions of
the flesh and that the Spirit will bring enlightenment which enables the recipient to discover the
truth.
The major achievement of the Cappadocians was to define how each distinct hypostasis,
personality, of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, could exist within the single Godhead. They had the
intellectual advantage over Athanasius in that they were able to draw without inhibition from pagan
philosophy. Much of their terminology seems to derive, for instance, from the Neoplatonist
philosopher Plotinus, the greatest spiritual mind of the third century and among the finest philosophers
of the classical world. Plotinus had also posited three divine entities, the One, an all-pervading
Intellect, which conveys the Platonic Forms to the material world, and a World-Soul. They shared
a common substance, yet each had a distinct role, and here again Plotinus used the word hypostasis.
So he provided a pagan framework that could be incorporated into Christianity. Yet the only way in
which any one formula could be declared as supreme above the others was by imposition from above.
By 380, Constantinople was a predominantly Christian city and it had gained a reputation for
buzzing with theological discussion. When Gregory of Nyssa visited in 381 he found that even the
bath attendants were discussing the relationship of Father to Son. It is important to capture this
moment, the last in the empires history when different Christian traditions were free to express
themselves.
The majority of the Christian population was still Homoian subordinationist, led by the bishop of
the city, Demophilus, who had taken office in 370. The Homoians still distinguished themselves from
the Eunomians but, twenty years on from his rejection by Constantius and undaunted by the attacks on
his theology by Basil and others, Eunomius was still full of energy. In 380, in fact, he is known to
have been preaching to enthusiastic crowds at Chalcedon just across the Bosporus from
Constantinople. His so-called Second Apology survives from these years as does a statement of his
views made for the emperor Theodosius in 383.
In these Eunomius ruthlessly analyses the division between Father and Son, stressing again the
impossibility of anything of the Fathers substance being passed on to the Son. Eunomius may have
irritated everyone by the relentlessness of his logic (he was taunted by his enemies for having
Aristotle as his bishop!) but he played a vital part in helping to clarify the issues, especially by
exposing the vagueness of the term homoios. He certainly had a point. There are no less than twelve
known Homoian creeds, including one by the missionary Ulfilas. Gregory of Nazianzus remarked that
homoios was a figure seeming to look in the direction of all who passed by, a boot fitting either
foot, a winnowing with every wind.3
While Eunomius was expounding his views in Chalcedon, a small congregation of Nicene
believers, drawn mainly from the administrative elite of Constantinople, was receiving a series of
high-level orations from Gregory of Nazianzus who had been appointed their priest. The five so-
called Theological Orations are the fullest and most coherent statement of Nicene orthodoxy.
Gregory starts by explaining that only those who have reflected deeply on theology can expound it a
rebuke to the chattering bath attendants and others who were debating the issues on the streets. He
proceeds by talking each major issue through, often courageously so by quoting the subordinationist
case through its scriptures and attempting to refute each text. He admits that there are weaknesses in
the Nicene case: he struggles, as did every Nicene, with the problem of how a Jesus one in substance
with the Father could suffer and he has to confess that there is no agreement on the nature of the Holy
Spirit. His attempts to deal with the verses from the gospels that talk of Jesus inferiority to the Father
are not always convincing. Even so the orations remain a tour de force and were recognised as such
for generations to come.
Yet as the debates continued in Constantinople, a shadow hovered over the city. In January 380 a
new emperor of the east, a Spanish general named Theodosius, had issued an edict, not a law as such
but a statement of his intent, from Thessalonika. Directed specifically at the people of his capital it
announced that henceforth they must believe in a single deity of the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost
under the concept of equal majesty and of the Holy Trinity. Any other belief was demented and
insane and would incur both the wrath of God and the secular punishment of the emperor.
 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Stifling of Christian Diversity
THEODOSIUS ROOTS WERE IN THE CHRISTIAN ARISTOCRACY OF Spain. He had been appointed emperor of
the east in 379 at a moment of great crisis. Valentinian, probably the last Roman emperor to be able to
mount effective assaults on the barbarian tribes, had died in 375. His successor in the western
empire, his son Gratian, was only sixteen. Valentinians brother, Valens, still ruled over the eastern
empire but in 378 he was killed in a devastating defeat at Adrianople by an army of Goths. The
victorious Gothic bands were never strong enough to take any major cities but they had humiliated the
empire and they now disrupted much of its administrative framework in the Balkans as they plundered
the countryside. It was at this desperate moment that Gratian appointed Theodosius, who had already
proved himself as a successful general while in his twenties, as Valens successor.1
Theodosius was still not baptised in 379 but he had an austere faith and had absorbed, as his edict
suggested, belief in a Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost of equal majesty. When he arrived at
Thessalonika in 380 to lead the counter-attack against the Goths, he was baptised by the citys bishop,
Acholius, who was firmly committed to Nicaea. As a Latin speaker, Theodosius probably knew little
of the rich tradition of theological debate in the east, but he believed in bringing his new Christian
subjects more fully under state control. The edict from Thessalonika was the first intimation of the
new policy.
Theodosius approached the challenge of imposing uniformity of belief astutely. He announced the
outlines of his creed and promulgated it as a law before he sought the comments of the bishops. This
was to be a political rather than theological coup. So, as soon as he had entered his capital,
Constantinople, for the first time, in November 380, he summoned Bishop Demophilus and asked him
to renounce his Homoian beliefs in favour of the formula of equal majesty. To his credit,
Demophilus refused. He was deposed and Theodosius turned to Gregory of Nazianzus whose
Theological Orations were compatible with the emperors own beliefs. Even though his Nicene
congregation made up only a small minority of the citys Christian population, Gregory was
astonished to find himself the new bishop. To ensure his safety from the Homoian masses, troops had
to line the streets and even take up guard inside the Church of the Holy Apostles where his
enthronement took place.
Theodosius now moved to impose his faith across the eastern empire. In a surviving epistula, a
formal letter imposing a law, issued to the prefect of Illyricum in January 381, Theodosius insisted
that only those who affirmed the faith of Nicaea could now be appointed bishops. The details of
what this meant were left somewhat vague in the letter. Father and Son had to be accepted as under
one name but there was no specific mention of homoousios. The Holy Spirit was given no special
status it was simply stated that it should not be violated by being denied. However, there were
sweeping condemnations of the poison of the Arian sacrilege and the crime of the Eunomian
heresy.
There was no mercy shown to those who were now classified as insane and demented heretics.
They had to surrender their churches to those clergy who came within Theodosius definition, lose
any tax exemptions they had and they could not build replacement churches within the city walls. Any
open protest was to be met with expulsion of the dissenters from the city. A few months later, even the
building of churches outside the walls was forbidden. There is a record from some years later of the
resolute Demophilus still conducting open-air services for his expelled Homoian congregation. It is
not known whether similar laws were issued to the prefects of other parts of the east but the letter to
Illyricum concluded with a declaration of its aim that the whole world might be restored to orthodox
bishops who hold the Nicene faith and there are records of expulsions of Homoians in provinces
outside Illyricum.
With the law now in place, Theodosius summoned to Constantinople a council of bishops who
were known to be committed to Nicaea to endorse it. These had already made themselves known at
an assembly held in Antioch by Meletius, the citys Nicene bishop, in 379, but it was a limited group.
There were no bishops recorded from Illyricum or Egypt and the representatives from western Asia
were followers of one Macedonius whose loyalty to the Nicene creed was such that they would not
accept the divinity of the Holy Spirit. The Nicene creed asked no more than to believe in the Holy
Spirit and the Macedonians clung rigidly to this limited phrase. Any attempt to revise the creed so
as to give the Holy Spirit equality with Father and Son was bound to offend them.
The council began with a setback. Meletius died soon after his arrival. Not only had the council
lost an apparently efficient and charismatic president, but a dispute immediately broke out as to who
should be his successor as bishop of Antioch. This might have been resolved if the presidency of the
council had not been taken over by the newly appointed bishop of Constantinople, Gregory of
Nazianzus. Gregory may have been a consummate theologian but he was hopelessly out of his depth in
a leadership role. He endorsed an unpopular candidate, one Paulinus, as Meletius replacement in
Antioch, refused to back down when defeated and instead berated the council for not backing his
personal interpretation of the Nicene formula which insisted that the Holy Spirit be given an elevated
status as one in substance with Father and Son. He resigned, leaving a bitter description of his
fellow bishops as a mob of wild young men. A walkout of the Macedonians followed. Gregory,
accused by his opponents, who had been strengthened by the arrival of some bishops from Egypt, of
occupying his see unlawfully, in that he was still bishop of the remote Cappadocian town of Sasima,
resigned the bishopric of Constantinople. It was now that he wrote that he had never attended a church
council which produced deliverance from evils rather than the addition to them rivalries and
manoeuvres always prevail over reason.2
Theodosius must have been taken aback by the uproar. He was, however, a pragmatic ruler. He
seized the initiative by appointing a senator, Nectarius, as the councils new president. Nectarius was
popular within the city and the bishops appear to have accepted him although he was only a
catechumen and not yet baptised. It paid to have some form of bulwark against the dispossessed
Homoians whose discontent must have been obvious to the visiting bishops. He was soon baptised
and consecrated bishop of Constantinople. His theological deficiencies were remedied by instructing
him in the Nicene faith. Theodosius now drove home his advantage. Constantinople was declared the
second bishopric of the empire after Rome. It was an astonishing move but his policy was to link the
ecclesiastical administration to the political and Constantinople deserved precedence as the second
Rome. The two most powerful bishoprics of the east could do little to stop him. Antioch was still
vacant and the bishop of Alexandria, Timothy, had only just been installed. To keep them in their
place, it was declared that no bishop could meddle in affairs outside his diocese. This was
essentially a political coup against the church Constantine would have approved.
At some point before the council was dissolved in July 381, it issued a revised version of the
Nicene creed. The episode is shrouded in mystery because the new creed is only known from a
declaration at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 when it was accredited to the council of 381. It is the
version that is used today with the Holy Spirit elevated as the Lord and Life-giver. There is no
specific mention of the Trinity and certainly none of the consubstantiality of the Holy Spirit. As
suggested earlier, the words appear drawn from Basils On the Holy Spirit, although Basil himself
had died in 379. There is no sign of any acknowledgement of Athanasius. It is probable that the creed
could never have been promulgated in Constantinople while the council was in session because of the
continuing hostility to Nicaea from the local population.

The creed which was passed at Constantinople in 381 runs as follows:

We believe in one God Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and all things, seen and unseen;
And in one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, the Only-begotten, begotten by his Father before
all ages, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial [
homoousios] with the Father, through whom all things came into existence, who for us men and for
our salvation came down from the heavens and became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin
Mary and became a man, and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate and suffered and was buried
and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures and ascended into the heavens
and is seated at the right hand of the Father and will come again to judge the living and the dead,
and there will be no end to his kingdom;
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Life-giver, who proceeds from the Father, who is
worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son, who spoke by the prophets;
And in one holy, catholic and apostolic Church;
We confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins;
We wait for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the coming age, Amen.

The anathemas against Arius have been dropped in this version and the Holy Spirit given a higher
status, although there is no mention of a Trinity in which it is a consubstantial member. Those who
preach one baptism have won out over those who believe in rebaptism, and the resurrection of the
dead is now accepted. Note also the insistence that there is a single catholic (in this context
universal) church based on the apostolic succession.

With the conclusion of the council, Theodosius issued a new set of epistulae to his civil servants
asking them to impose the new faith. Again this was defined somewhat vaguely, as belief in Father,
Son and Holy Spirit as one in majesty, power, glory, splendour and divinity. Some distinction
between the three was maintained by acknowledging each as a persona (all imperial laws were
issued in Latin and this was the closest equivalent to the Greek hypostasis). Theodosius had learned
the lesson that any attempt to use a more precise terminology was likely to be thwarted by renewed
debate and instead he nominated bishops for each diocese who would issue certificates of orthodoxy
to their clergy without which they could not be promoted to bishoprics. It was a neat way of
distancing himself from further wrangling.
Not surprisingly disorder broke out as the new laws were enforced. The church had built up so
much wealth and enjoyed so many privileges that expelling the Arians from their churches was
explosive. One pro-Nicene historian, writing in the next century, talks of [Arian] wolves harrying the
flocks up and down the glades, daring to hold rival assemblies, stirring sedition among the people,
and shrinking from nothing which can do damage to the churches. The unrest was so extensive that
Theodosius wavered. In 383 he called another, smaller council, perhaps more remarkable than the
selective assembly of 381 in that he asked representatives of all the main schools to attend. There
was Nectarius, of course, in his new role as bishop of Constantinople, Demophilus and even
Eunomius himself. The Macedonians sent one of their bishops. The emperor asked each leader to
provide a statement of his own beliefs. He hoped that some kind of consensus could be reached by
comparing them. Once again, however, the discussions became acrimonious. The historian Sozomen
records that the laity present were infuriated by the way the bickering between bishops discredited
them before the emperor. Losing patience, Theodosius announced that he would accept only the creed
of Nectarius (which had been drawn up for the former pagan by Nicene theologians) and that all other
views were heretical. He issued a new set of laws against heretics.
Theodosius can hardly be blamed for his attempt to bring the empire into some kind of order and
he doubtless felt that he was justified in doing this through the imposition of his Christian faith. He
had the coercive power to do so and ultimately the church had no means of opposing his will. In
effect, Theodosius had backed one faction, the Nicene, and isolated the rest. There was no way that
those excluded, Eunomians and Homoians, could combine against him. By offering the wealth of the
church to the victors, he was cementing his laws within a bedrock of privilege and patronage. The
incentives for conformity were powerful.
Why did the emperor chose to support a Trinity of equal majesty rather than a subordinationist
alternative? Certainly Theodosius represented the beliefs of his fellow aristocratic Christians in
Spain and probably much of the western empire. The former provincial governor, Ambrose, now
bishop of Milan, was ardent in the Nicene cause. Yet there were deeper ideological reasons why this
class was so sympathetic to a Godhead in which Jesus was elevated into the divinity. The problem
for anyone, emperor, senior administrator or aristocratic landowner, who was concerned with
upholding the hierarchical structure of the empire, was that the Jesus of the gospels was a rebel
against the empire and had been executed by one of its provincial governors. He had preached the
immediate coming of the kingdom in which the poor would inherit the earth, hardly what the elite
wished to hear at a time of intense danger. There was an incentive to shift the emphasis from the
gospels to the divine Jesus, as pre-existent to the Incarnation and of high status at the right hand of the
Father. One can see the shift in Eusebius description of Christ in his Oration to Constantine, the
great High Priest of the mighty God, quoted earlier. The Jesus of the gospels had again been ignored.
One of the most extraordinary manifestations of this elevation of Christ is to be found in De fide, a
defence of the Nicene faith written by Ambrose, bishop of Milan. In De fide Ambrose equates victory
in war with acceptance of the Nicene creed and points out that the Homoians are always losing
battles because they insult God through their heresy an argument which was to be extended by later
Nicene historians to provide an explanation for the Homoian Valens defeat at Adrianople.
Remarkably, Ambrose announces that Christ is the leader of the legions, a bizarre distortion of the
historical reality but one that reflects the imperial ideology within which the church now operated. By
390, in the church of San Pudenziana in Rome, Christ is shown in majesty as an imperial magistrate.
The equation between Nicene orthodoxy and the administrative classes can be supported by details of
the only independent Nicene congregation recorded that ministered to by Gregory of Nazianzus in
Constantinople and made up largely of civil servants and the citys elite.
 The imposition of the Nicene creed was motivated as much by politics as theology. Imposed
through imperial law, accepted by a council presided over by a hastily converted senator, it was the
theological formula which most fully met the needs of the empire for an ideology of good order under
the auspices of God. Yet histories of Christian doctrine still talk of the Nicene solution as if it had
floated down from heaven and had been recognised by the bishops as the only possible formula to
describe the three members of the Trinity. In reality, Theodosius brought the belief from his native
Spain to the eastern empire where the matter was still unresolved and then imposed it by law before
calling a hand-picked council on the matter. One result of this was that the church was unable to
provide reasoned support for the Nicene Trinity and it is still referred to in the Roman Catholic
catechism as a mystery of faith, a revelation of God that is inaccessible to reason alone. Athanasius
and the Cappadocian Fathers became the bulwarks of orthodoxy, their opponents denounced as
heretical. Only recently has Theodosius considerable role in settling the great theological debates
been recognised.
 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Assault on Paganism
THEODOSIUS WAS A PRAGMATIST. BY 382 HE HAD ACCEPTED THE inevitable and come to an agreement by
which the Gothic victors of Adrianople were allowed to settle in Thrace and declare themselves
allies of the Roman state. While this brought peace, the forced compromise did not augur well for the
future of the empire. There was another major blow to the empire in the summer of 383 when the
commander of the British legions, Magnus Maximus, revolted against the rule of Gratian, the young
emperor in the west, and crossed over to Gaul. Gratians credibility was shattered as his authority
collapsed across the north-western empire and he was assassinated by his own men as he marched
north to confront the usurper. This left his young brother, Valentinian II, still only twelve, as nominal
emperor in the west. In 387 Maximus moved on into Italy forcing Valentinian and his mother Justina to
flee eastwards to Thessalonika in search of Theodosius help. Theodosius counter-attack proved
successful. Maximus was killed and Theodosius moved into Milan which, thanks to its central
position in northern Italy, had become the imperial command post of the western empire. He was now
effectively the ruler of the whole empire and he began grooming his two sons, Arcadius and
Honorius, for the succession.
In Milan Theodosius encountered Ambrose, the formidable bishop of the city. Ambrose had been a
local provincial governor who had become bishop in 374 at a time of disorder among the Christian
factions there.1 Ambrose was typical of the administrative class in that he was an enthusiast for
Nicaea. He was also a champion of church authority and had shown no inhibitions about imposing his
will within his own diocese and in the western church whenever he had the chance. He did so without
scruple. In 381, at a small council that he stage-managed at Aquileia, Ambrose had browbeaten the
much-respected subordinationist bishop of Ratiaria, Palladius, into submission. Two years later a
delegation arrived from Rome to petition with Valentinian II for the restoration of the Altar of Victory
to the senate house in Rome from where it had been removed by Christians. Its leader, the pagan
senator Symmachus, had pleaded for tolerance on the grounds that it was essential to respect the
different paths by which the truth might be found. More emotionally, he asked for respect for the
religious beliefs that his ancestors had followed for centuries: Allow us, as old men, to leave for
posterity what we received as boys. Ambroses retort, relayed to the emperor, was sharp and
unrelenting: The only salvation comes from the Christian God: all pagan gods are devils. The young
Valentinian acquiesced to his bishops demands.
Valentinian and his mother Justina, the widow of Valentinian I, were Homoians but when they had
tried to secure a church for their own worship in the city in 385, the Nicene Ambrose had once again
been obstructive. He organised demonstrations, occupied churches, and in one remarkable coup
announced the discovery of the bodies of two martyrs from the persecutions of earlier times. The
fresh blood on their bones and the miracles these effected were, he announced with considerable
imagination, evidence of the support of the Nicene God. He manipulated the credulity of his
congregation so effectively that Valentinian and Justina were completely outmanoeuvred. It was at this
moment of their humiliation that Maximus chose to invade Italy in 387.
With Maximus defeated and the Nicene Theodosius now in Milan one might have hoped that
Ambrose would have been satisfied. Yet his ambition was to achieve a personal ascendancy over the
emperor and he searched for a way in which he could dress this in a theological cloak. In 388 news
reached the emperor that a Christian mob led by its bishop had sacked a Jewish synagogue in
Callinicum, a city on the Euphrates. Theodosius had ordered the bishop to restore the building.
Ambrose was having none of it. He declared that there must be no building where Christ was denied
and that it was unjustified to ask a bishop to betray his conscience by restoring a synagogue. He even
said that he would be prepared to assume responsibility for the burning of the building himself.
Theodosius quietly backed down.
The initiation of such violence against Jewish and pagan shrines was not new. Many of the
miracles accredited to Martin of Tours, an associate of Hilary of Poitiers, in the 370s in Gaul
involved the destruction of pagan shrines. Several of Theodosius senior officials in his eastern
administration had come with him from the west and brought their own fanatical impulses with them.
Maternus Cynegius, appointed prefect of the east by Theodosius, is associated with the destruction of
the great temple complex at Edessa. These officials were supported by roving bands of monks. The
pagan orator Libanius complained in an oration of 386 of the black-robed tribe who hasten to attack
the temples with sticks and stone and bars of iron utter desolation follows, with the stripping of
roofs, demolition of walls, the tearing down of statues. The archaeological evidence of destruction is
extensive.2
Theodosius initial reaction to Callinicum suggests that he was increasingly worried by this
vandalism. He may have acquiesced to Ambroses demands over Callinicum in 388 but in 390 he
ordered monks to avoid cities and retire instead to the deserts. One reason for restraint was that
paganism was still strong, particularly in cities such as Rome where the senatorial aristocracy
remained largely unconverted. Provocation made no sense when the empire was still so unsettled. In
389, the emperor visited the ancient capital. The incentive for the visit was the need to present his son
Honorius to the senate, still made up of the pagan aristocracy, in the hope that his legitimacy as
Theodosius eventual successor in the western empire would be recognised. Theodosius was greeted
with all the traditional reverence accorded to respected emperors; he was compared to Augustus and
Trajan, and even to the pagan gods, Jupiter and Hercules. In return Theodosius overlooked the
support the senate had given Maximus. The peaceful consolidation of his power had priority and he
awarded some of the more prominent senators posts in the imperial administration of Italy and North
Africa.
By 390 Theodosius might have had cause for satisfaction. He had defended the borders of the
empire from invasion and seen off the revolt of Maximus. Some form of peace with the Goths had
been achieved. He had organised the church under his auspices and the empire was now officially
Nicene. It was therefore tragic that an incident in Thessalonika threatened his image as the serene
emperor. The governor of this important city, Butheric, a Goth who headed a garrison of Gothic
troops, had arrested a popular charioteer on a charge of homosexual rape. The crowds had erupted
and Butheric and several of his officials had been murdered. Theodosius ordered retaliation. It
appears that his temper had got the better of him, although it may be that his orders were elaborated
by one of his officials, Flavius Rufinus, known to be ruthless, as they travelled eastwards. The result
was a vicious massacre of the insurgents, many of whom were rounded up in the hippodrome and
slaughtered. Even more serious than the loss of life was the spectre of an emperor who had lost his
self-control. Emperors were expected to exist as if they were above the turmoil of everyday life and
his display of petulance was unforgivable.
What happened next is difficult to assess as only Ambroses account survives. In this, Ambrose
refused Theodosius communion until he had made public penance in the cathedral. Theodosius did, in
fact, come to the cathedral but it may have been on his own initiative to use the building for a stage-
managed public display of humilitas, the most effective way he knew of redressing the situation.
Whatever the truth, Ambrose was able to publicly declare, at Theodosius funeral in 395, that the
emperor had recognised the moral supremacy of the church over the actions of an emperor.
It was soon after this that Theodosius embarked on a sweeping programme aimed at the
suppression of paganism. It was an unexpected development, especially in view of his conciliatory
attitude to the aristocrats in Rome. Traditionally, this volte-face has been seen as a response to
Ambroses consolidation of his victory over the emperor but, in 391, when the first laws were
promulgated, Theodosius was heading back to Constantinople and so was outside Ambroses ambit.
A more plausible explanation lies in the growing power of Flavius Rufinus. Rufinus official title in
Milan had been magister officiorum, head of the offices, a powerful position in the court. Rufinus
is known to have been fanatical in his Christian belief and determined to take one of the top posts in
the eastern administration. This meant ousting Tatianus, the praetorian prefect, who was a pagan. The
harsh laws of 391 to 392 against paganism appear to be related to the power struggle, those of 391
having been passed when Theodosius was on the way back to the capital with Rufinus. Sacrificing
was forbidden, as it had been before, but now entry to pagan shrines was banned as well. In April
392 the monks were released from all restrictions on their movements and once more were free to
rampage among pagan shrines.
In the summer of 392, Tatianus was deposed and the triumphant Rufinus, who inherited his post as
praetorian prefect of the east, issued a wide-ranging law against paganism. Any activity associated
with pagan rites was suppressed and any symbol of paganism was banned. Officials could even enter
homes in search of offensive material. There was simply no precedent for such a sweeping law. To
find an equivalent one would have to go back to mid-fourteenth century BC Egypt when the pharaoh
Akhenaten was banning all rivals to his god Aten. Akhenatens campaign collapsed with his death;
Theodosius proved permanent.
The immediate results are well documented. While it is true that many pagan cults and festivals
were in decline, they were still being celebrated. Recent excavations at Olympia suggest that games
were thriving at the 291st Olympiad in 381 while archaeological research confirms that the temples
in the Roman forum were being restored in the 380s. By the 390s, on the other hand, Jerome was
reporting that the gilded Capitol falls into disrepair, dust and cobwebs cover all Romes temples
The city shakes on its foundations, and a stream of people hurries, past half-fallen shrines, to the
tombs of the martyrs. Jerome approvingly recorded the sacking of a temple of Mithras and indeed
excavations under the church of St Prisca on the Aventine Hill have uncovered a ruined Mithraeum on
which the church was built. (The destruction of temples to Mithras is well documented with their
initiation rites, internal hierarchies and welcoming of free citizen, slave and freedman, they appear to
have been rivals to the Christian communities.) Symbolically the most important moment came with
the demolition in Alexandria of the Serapeion, regarded as the greatest complex of religious buildings
outside Rome, by a Christian mob led by their bishop, Theophilus.
These years saw the beginning of the end of the pagan world. The Olympic games had been
inaugurated in the eighth century BC; they were held for the last time in 393. In Egypt, the use of
hieroglyphics had survived through centuries of Greek and Roman rule: the very last date from 394
and it was to be over fourteen centuries before anyone could again read them. Eusebius had already
rejoiced that Christ had redeemed even the souls of the Egyptians from such a disease of lasting and
continued blindness. Throughout the empire shrines were destroyed, temples recreated as Christian
churches, and buildings such as bathhouses (naked public bathing was now frowned upon)
vandalised. Porphyry, the bishop of Gaza, visited the imperial court in 400 and managed to persuade
the emperor Arcadius to provide him with troops to sack the main temple in the city. As the temple
burned, neighbouring homes were raided for books and idols that were either burned or thrown into
the public latrines.
There was a final drama in Theodosius reign. Valentinian had been isolated in Gaul and in 392 he
appears to have committed suicide. His senior general Arbogast elevated one Eugenius as a
replacement emperor. Eugenius had links to the eastern court and Arbogast may have hoped that
Theodosius would acquiesce to the promotion. There was never much chance of this as Theodosius
dynastic ambitions for his son, Honorius, as well as his campaign to enforce Christianity, risked being
thwarted by the usurper. Furthermore, while Eugenius was nominally a Christian, he showed himself
receptive to paganism, and his promotion released an outburst of resentment against the anti-pagan
laws. The old cults were revived in the Latin west, the Altar of Victory was returned to the senate
house in Rome. Theodosius had little option but to return to Italy to confront Eugenius. The two sides
met at the river Frigidus in September 394. It was a closely fought battle and Theodosius was lucky to
win it. Many of his Gothic allies were killed in the first onslaught and it was said that it was only the
icy blasts of the notorious bora that swept across the battlefield at a crucial moment the next day that
brought him victory.
The battle of the river Frigidus was rewritten, notably by the fifth-century historian Theodoret, as
the triumph of Christianity over paganism, the appearance of the bora itself a miracle from God.
Ambrose was, of course, an important propagandist for this approach to events. He had his chance
just a few months later, in January 395, on the death of Theodosius. The funeral oration he gave in one
of his grand new churches in Milan is a fascinating one.3 Ambrose creates the idea of a Christian
dynasty, inaugurated by Constantine. Here is the earliest recorded account of the finding of the True
Cross by Constantines mother, Helena. Ambrose even tells how Constantine incorporated a nail from
the cross in his horses bridle so fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah, 14:20: In that day that which is
upon the bridle of the horse shall be holy to the Lord Almighty. Theodosius, and now his sons
Honorius and Arcadius, carry on Gods will. In a sermon relying heavily on Old Testament texts, the
victories of Theodosius are compared to that of Elisha over the Syrians in the Book of Kings.
Ambrose cannot resist dwelling on Theodosius repentance after Thessalonika: He wept publicly for
his sin he prayed for pardon with groans and with tears What private citizens are ashamed to
do, the emperor was not ashamed to do. This subjugation of the emperor to the will of God and the
church had, Ambrose assured his listeners, ensured his glory in heaven. This supremacy was
embedded in western theology in the works of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and the precedent of
Thessalonika was used for the excommunication of the Holy Roman emperor Henry IV by pope
Gregory VII in the 1070s.

The survival of Theodosius as emperor had been remarkable, especially in view of the vulnerable
position he found himself in in 379 and the continuing challenges to the empire from usurpers. He had
showed himself to be immensely resilient and able to compromise when necessary. His attempt to
bring the church under the auspices of the state was understandable even if in his comparative
moderation he was outmanoeuvred by determined churchmen and the more fanatical of his Christian
officials. Yet he presided over a turning point in the history of western thought. The result of the
Council of Constantinople (for which read Theodosius laws), was to reduce the meanings of the
word God from a very large selection of alternatives to one only with the result that when Western
man today says God he means the one sole, exclusive [Trinitarian] God and nothing else.4
Freedom of debate on the nature of the supernatural was under threat. For the pagan world this meant
an assault on secular philosophy, for Christians on the many alternative ways of exploring God and
his relationship with Father and Son and hence the possibility of high-quality and creative theological
discourse.
The Nicene faith that had been imposed on the empire was never theologically coherent. The
confusion over how one substance could exist in both unbegotten and begotten forms without
losing its sameness had not been resolved. The Council of Constantinople had failed to clarify the
confusion. In fact, when one remembers the impressive debates which had taken place since 325,
their contribution to the making of the creed of 381 was meagre. Yet, once Theodosius had applied the
coercive powers of the state to the matter, the church had little option but to acquiesce to the Nicene
formula. In return for this the church had achieved a structure and status that would enable it to
survive through the ensuing centuries. When the Nicene creed was finally adopted in the west (by
Rome only in 1014), it had become a ritualistic text and the theological inconsistencies it contained
were beyond the reach of reasoned debate.
It was perhaps inevitable that Theodosius would also launch an assault on paganism, even if the
immediate catalysts for his campaign are not obvious. One can hardly proclaim that there is only one
correct form of Christian belief but at the same time allow all its pagan rivals to continue unmolested.
Christians themselves were fuelled by the Old Testament texts that encouraged them to destroy the
altars of the infidels. While emperors were reluctant to condone disorder they were hardly in a
position to prevent it when they had done so much to shape an expansionist church as an integrated
part of the empire. What was now lost was a tradition of intellectual diversity which was centuries
old. No longer was the world seen as a place to be actively explored and understood; it was assumed
instead to be the unchanging creation of God. The Jesus of the gospels had been elevated into the
Godhead and centuries of subordinationist belief wiped out. Many histories of Christianity still fail to
acknowledge that subordinationism was the dominant and virtually unchallenged theology of the early
church.
 CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
No one is honoured before him
THE RISE OF THE BISHOP

THE PEAK OF NOBILITY IS TO BE RECKONED AMONG THE SONS OF God. This extraordinary statement
made by Hilary, bishop of Arles between 429 and his death in 449, sums up the dramatic change of
status that Constantine brought to the bishops. Hilary is echoed by John Chrysostom, the bishop of
Constantinople: Prefects and city magistrates do not enjoy such honour as the magistrate of the
church; for if he enters the palace, who ranks the highest, or among the matrons, or among the houses
of the great. No one is honoured before him. The resources that were now available to the church
underpinned this elevated status. The patronage of the emperors, the surrender of their riches by
ascetics, the offerings of the faithful, contributed to the creation of a wealthy community. Ammianus
Marcellinus describes how the bishops of Rome are assured of rich gifts from ladies of quality; they
can ride in carriages, dress splendidly and outdo kings in the lavishness of their table.
Clearly this was not the whole picture. The number of bishops multiplied in these years it is
estimated that there were two thousand in the empire by the mid-fifth century. In those parts of the
empire that had experienced schism, northern Africa, for instance, where even as late as 411 over
three hundred Donatist bishops turned up to a council held at Carthage, there might have been two or
more rival bishops in a small town. The remoter of the cities were unpopular assignments. When
Basil of Caesarea appointed his friend Gregory of Nazianzus to the town of Sasima in Cappadocia,
Gregory was deeply offended. One can imagine the condescension in his voice as he describes an
utterly dreadful, pokey little hole, a place wholly devoid of water, vegetation and the company of
gentlemen. He refused to move there, retiring to a monastery instead. He was as dismissive of his
fellow bishops in such areas, complaining of former labourers, money changers, sailors still smelling
of bilge water and blacksmiths who had not yet washed the soot off their backs, dung-beetles headed
for the skies as he snobbishly put it. Whatever the brilliance of his mind, it had not tempered the
disdain of his class towards those without paideia.
The church now offered a viable and prestigious career with many bishops being recruited directly
from the civil service. Ambrose of Milan and Paulinus of Nola had both held governorships in Italy;
the bishop of Cyzicus, Eleusius, had served in the imperial civil service; the father of Gregory of
Nazianzus, another Gregory, had been a magistrate before becoming bishop of Nazianzus. Martin of
Tours and several of his fellow bishops in Gaul had been army officers. Augustine held the
prestigious post of city orator in Milan before his conversion. There were even cases of distinguished
civil servants being awarded a bishopric as an end-of-service post. Often the traditional roles of the
elite were absorbed in the work of the bishop. Basil of Caesarea is found negotiating tax exemptions
for petitioners in much the same way a patron would have done in earlier days.
Yet the core of a bishops responsibilities lay where they had always been, with the care of their
junior clergy and congregations, the administration of the sacraments, discharging the venerable
mysteries, as one fifth-century bishop put it, and the overseeing of the needs of the Christian poor.
The effective bishop had to add spiritual charisma to any administrative skills he might have. There
had been much discussion by the earlier church fathers over the nature of a bishops authority.
Clement of Alexandria had taught that it could only grow out of a life based on an imitation of Christ.
His instincts as a philosopher led him to define three roles: one of contemplation, one of fulfilling the
commandments and one of leading others towards virtue. Origen went further in stressing the
importance of the ascetic lifestyle, in essence the transferring of bodily desires into a mind that
transcended them and released new spiritual and mental energies as a result. The problem lay in
reconciling these holy men with the messy politics and power struggles of everyday life in the church.
Spiritual power and administrative ability did not often mix. Those who had transcended the material
world were not always eager to engage in the networking needed to secure election as a bishop and
the ascetic living a withdrawn life in the desert was always a potential threat to the authority of the
more worldly bishops.
A good example of a bishop who retained his saintliness despite the pressures to exploit the status
of the position is the aristocratic Paulinus, a former governor of Campania (c.354431). Paulinus
renounced his vast estates, was ordained and eventually became bishop of Nola, in southern Italy,
where he created a shrine to the local saint, Felix, alongside a hospital and other benefactions to the
local community, including an aqueduct. He thought deeply about how to convey the teachings of
Christ and his hero Felix to pilgrims to the shrine. On each of Felixs anniversaries he would
compose a poem for his visitors that praised the more humble of Christian virtues. Paulinus is the first
known clergyman to use the decoration of his church for instruction of the illiterate. Over the apse
was a mosaic depicting the Trinity, with God as a hand from above, Christ as a Lamb and the Holy
Spirit as a dove. In a portico facing an adjoining courtyard, a cycle of frescoes from the Old and New
Testaments was designed to offer simple moral guidance for those not able to read and long
accustomed to pagan cults. Figures from the Old Testament were included to provide examples of
holy living with accompanying texts for those who could read.1
For others, however, the public display of their status seemed to dominate. Many bishops palaces
echoed those of provincial governors with their audience halls and separate rooms for banqueting.
Their churches were even more magnificent. While city life was on the whole losing vitality (this has
to be a generalisation as many cities in the east were still flourishing into the sixth century but
Ambrose, for instance, describes the once prosperous cities along the Via Emilia in northern Italy as
corpses) there was a massive shift of resources towards church building. Many initiatives were
local. Eugenius, bishop of Laodicea, a former provincial administrator who married into a senatorial
family, had the opportunity to build a new church in Constantines reign. In his epitaph he proclaimed
that he had built the whole church from its foundations and provided all the adornments around it,
namely the colonnades, the porticoes, paintings, mosaics, the fountain and the atrium. Others had the
support of the emperor. So the brilliantly decorated Golden Octagon in Antioch, completed in 341,
was next to the imperial palace and acted both as a cathedral and a focus for the emperors
ceremonial occasions when he was in residence.
The greatest builder of all was Ambrose in Milan. He had inherited a vast cathedral built earlier
in the century but he ringed the city with new basilicas built on the burial places of martyrs, following
a pattern already established in Rome. This was an ambitious programme and established the bishop
as a major employer of labourers, especially craftsmen skilled in stoneworking and mosaic-laying. It
was typical of the man that he is the first bishop recorded to have built a church, the Basilica
Ambrosiana, for the reception of his own bones. He was innovative in making relics a prominent
focus of all his churches, obtaining brandea, cloths which had touched sacred bones, in this instance,
those of Peter and Paul, for his Basilica Apostolorum. Theodosius gave him relics of the apostles
John, Andrew and Thomas, for his foundations. This was a new and important way of advertising a
church and citys presence to the wider world and those churches with the most prestigious relics
became the focus of pilgrimage. This meshing of spiritual and political power was to prove essential
for the long-term survival of the church, especially in the west when the structure of imperial
government collapsed there.
A building programme less centred on self-glorification was the new city that Basil built outside
Caesarea (in Cappadocia) for the poor and lepers. This was begun in about 370 and was gradually
extended over the next decade so it contained not only a large church but an impressive residence for
the supervisor of the complex and his clergy (so grand, Basil writes, that magistrates themselves
would be happy to reside there), hospices for visitors and the sick and accommodation for nurses and
physicians. In his Funeral Oration for Basil (delivered in 379), Gregory of Nazianzus compares the
city with the Seven Wonders of the World, suggesting it surpasses them because, unlike pagan shrines,
it provided its patron with a swift ascent to heaven.
This Funeral Oration is often considered the finest of the age and marks the culmination of
classical rhetoric, now transferred to a Christian setting. The speakers had learned their craft in the
very best schools. John Chrysostom had been a pupil of the famous Antioch orator Libanius; Basil of
Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus trained in Athens; Ambrose and Jerome were educated in Rome.
Augustine studied rhetoric for three years in Carthage before becoming a teacher of rhetoric and then
the city orator in Milan. These vast churches provided the bishops with a stage on which they could
exercise their oratory and this enabled them to use congregations to achieve their spiritual and
political ends. When there were tax riots in Antioch in 387 and statues of the emperor were defaced it
was Bishop Flavian who hurried to Constantinople to plead, successfully as it turned out, with
Theodosius for mercy. So here was a refocusing of an ancient art to new ends.
Perhaps the most accomplished orator of the age was John, known since the seventh century as
John Chrysostom, John of the Golden Mouth. John was a superb speaker, coming down from his
cathedra into the body of the church to magnify his effect. His sermons with their vivid imagery (he
complained of how the rich were using silver chamber pots for their excrement while the poor
maimed their own children in the hope of alms) brought continuous applause. John had made his
reputation in Antioch with his dramatic sermons during that tense period in 387 when the city waited
to see if the emperor would retaliate against those who had defaced his statues during the
aforementioned tax riots. This, John warned his nervous audiences, would be how the Last Judgement
would feel and they should learn from the experience. On a more scholarly level, he was one of the
first preachers to explore Pauls letters in depth, again through a long series of sermons, and so
helped give the apostle the prominence in Christian thought that proved permanent. (Augustine, as
will be seen, was involved in much the same task in the west.) Johns approach to the scriptures was
literal, in contrast to the more allegorical Origenist approach adopted in Alexandria, and his sermons
resonated with his audiences so well that some nine hundred, most of them from his time in Antioch,
from where he was transferred to Constantinople in 397, have been preserved.
There were difficult boundaries here. The incentive to use rhetoric to arouse emotions often
proved too great. The major targets, especially after 381, were pagans, heretics and Jews and the
invective used against them was sweeping and polemical. The Jews were particularly hard hit. Many
Christians still attended the synagogues or, in defiance of Nicaea, celebrated Easter on the same day
as the Passover. John Chrysostom was furious. A series of sermons that he preached in 386 in Antioch
is shocking in its tasteless denunciations of the synagogues as equivalent to brothels or dens of
thieves. Accusing the Jews of every kind of perversity (including, of course, the murder of Christ)
John dredged his way through the Old Testament in search of any displeasure shown by God to Israel,
often taking texts out of context to do so.
These oratorical campaigns became part of the new Christian ideology. In 415, Severus, the
bishop of Mahon in Minorca, set on fire a synagogue filled with its congregation after they had
refused to debate with him. Many bishops played a leading part in the destruction of the pagan world.
Alexandria, in particular, was known for its tempestuous bishops and the volatility of its population.
The combination could be explosive. In 392 a Mithraeum had been demolished to make room for a
new church. This caused a riot against the Christians in which hostages were taken and concealed in
the complex of the Serapeion, the vast temple that dominated the city. The bishop of Alexandria,
Theophilus, ascended the steps of the building and read out a letter from the emperor apparently
denouncing the pagan gods. (This was presumably derived from Theodosius anti-pagan legislation of
that year.) It is not clear whether the pagans scattered or killed the hostages but Theophilus gave the
signal to attack the statue of the god Serapis and then the buildings were razed to the ground. Part of
the great library of Alexandria was included.
These stories of violence conflict with traditional pictures of bishops as respected upholders of
good order.2 Although there were many factors that made city life violent scarcity of food, increases
in taxation, or the flooding in of refugees some were related to the rise of the church as an
alternative centre of authority which found itself competing with other longer established communities
in the cities. With the support of emperors from Constantine onwards the church felt that the tide was
flowing in its favour. There was a confidence, even a self-righteousness, in the way bishops assailed
their opponents. Once again the Old Testament provided a mass of texts that condoned the violence by
providing examples of a jealous God wreaking vengeance on his enemies: Ye shall destroy their
altars, break down their images, and cut down their groves for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is
a Jealous God, as Exodus puts it (34:1314).
When the news of the destruction of the Serapeion reached him, Theodosius attempted to regain the
initiative. He dismissed the city prefect, Evragius, for not preventing the violence and urged his
successor to deal firmly with the rioters. Bishops who were determined to destroy paganism now had
to act more carefully. Porphyry, the bishop of Gaza, went as far as to visit Constantinople to ask for
imperial troops to help demolish the most important pagan temple there. By now Theodosius son
Arcadius was on the throne and, like his father, was reluctant to support such blatant destruction. He
was prevailed upon by his empress, Eudoxia, and even her baby, the future Theodosius II, apparently
made a sign that was taken as a gesture of approval. The tearing down of pagan statues became a
badge of Christian holiness and Porphyrys triumph in Gaza was written up soon after his death in a
hagiographic biography.3
There was another catalyst for violence. As bishops held their thrones for life, in contrast to the
local governors who were often replaced after a year or two, promotion was slow and the death of a
bishop might be the only moment when ambitious clerics could gain control of their local churches
and their resources. Almost every election of which we have records was a violent one. Gregory of
Nazianzus deplored a conflict that had broken out over even so unattractive a bishopric as Sasima. It
was a no mans land between two rival bishops .an occasion for the outbreak of a frightful brawl.
The pretext was souls, but, in fact, it was desire for control, control of taxes and contributions which
have the whole world in miserable confusion. Damasus achieved the bishopric of Rome in 366 only
after pitched battles in the streets following which 138 bodies were found in a basilica. Ambrose was
appointed bishop of Milan, even before he had been baptised as a Christian, primarily to prevent
unrest between squabbling factions. Bassanius, bishop of Ephesus, found himself assailed by a mob at
Easter 448. He was taken from his church, beaten up and thrown into prison. A rival was installed
and later some of Bassanius supporters were found lying dead by the church door.
One of the most vicious power struggles was that which took place on the death of Theophilus in
Alexandria in 412. His nephew Cyril was determined to succeed but faced intense opposition. He
emerged triumphant but then launched violent attacks on his former opponents. These spread to the
Jewish quarter of the city where synagogues were seized and Jews driven from their homes. The city
prefect, Orestes, complained to the emperor (Theodosius II) about the disorder and the relationship
between the church and state authorities broke down completely.
The matter had to be resolved if the secular administration was to retain its authority. It was an
ancient custom that in times of unrest the city prefect would consult the philosophers of the city, who
would give their counsel. They were promised parrhesia, complete freedom to speak their mind.
Cyril claimed that the Christians had now assumed the role of advisers but Orestes snubbed him by
choosing to consult the most respected of the pagan intellectuals of Alexandria, Hypatia, a woman of
great integrity who was also an impressive mathematician and thoughtful commentator on the nature of
religious belief. It was said that she backed Orestes in his refusal to support Cyril. Cyril in his turn
spread rumours that Hypatia had cast spells on the Christians. In the rising tension, a deacon called
Peter organised a lynching party. Hypatia was hauled from her carriage, her body was dragged
through the streets and she was dismembered and burned. A seventh-century source describes how
Cyril was hailed as the new Theophilus in that he had followed the example of his predecessor and
had now destroyed the last symbol of paganism in the city.
It was indeed a crucial moment in the conflict between traditional pagan thought and Christianity.
The fate of Hypatia has been seen as the symbolic end of the era of Greek mathematics. It was
particularly tragic as Hypatia had welcomed both Christians and pagans to her school and after her
death many of her pagan students left for Athens to study there. As calm returned, even Christians
began to realise the enormity of what had happened and we find the church historian Socrates,
normally a supporter of church authority, openly criticising Cyril. The shocked emperor Theodosius
tried to bring things back into order by commanding Cyril to reduce his bodyguard to five hundred.
It may be that it was outrages such as this that gave rise to a law in which Christians (named as such)
who dare to lay violent hands on Jews and pagans who are living quietly and attempting nothing
disorderly or contrary to law are subject to heavy penalties.
The two areas where bishops provided the most effective service to the wider community were the
law and care of the poor. Constantine had seen the opportunity to extend the role of the bishops as
local magistrates.4 A law of 318 deals with the procedures under which a case could be transferred
from the secular to the ecclesiastical courts. At first this could take place if both parties agreed but
later one party alone could take the initiative, in effect allowing a Christian to have his case judged
by a man of his own faith. There is some evidence that the poor found it easier to have recourse to
these courts and they became popular. Ambrose was to complain that he had to judge cases involving
money, farms and even sheep. Augustine is found arbitrating between landlords and peasant tenants.
Very little is known of the legal procedures used by the courts. The basis of all jurisdiction
remained Roman law. Many bishops had, of course, absorbed a legal training as part of their
education. Ambrose was doing no more than transfer into an ecclesiastical context the skills he had
already practised as a provincial governor. In the early fifth century the church courts took on an
increasing responsibility for the enforcement of morals and the laws against pagans and heretics. Yet
many of the cases involved arbitration and bishops appeared ready to adopt a specifically Christian
approach to their duties, especially in talking of the need to temper the harshness of traditional law
with Christian charity. Others, notably Augustine, went further in backing judgements with reference
to scripture. The Old Testament provided a host of references to the justice of the king, especially in
upholding the rights of the oppressed. There is an emphasis in some records of the episcopal courts
taking on reconciliation, in marital cases, for instance. Again there is fragmentary evidence from the
430s that the state encouraged the church courts to deal with the protection of orphans.
One traditional role of the clergy that remained intact was their concern for the poor. Jesus had
taught that care for the sick and needy was central to the Christian mission. For now, by Gods will,
it is winter, preached Augustine. Think of the poor. Think of how the naked Christ can be clothed.
Pay attention to Christ in the person of the poor, as he lies in the portico, as he suffers hunger, as he
endures the cold. The Old Testament precedents of the just king hearing the cries of the oppressed
may have been an influence here.
There were, of course, pagan traditions by which bread and circuses had been provided for the
masses, not least to maintain social harmony. The emperors knew too well that hardship and
subsequent rioting had resulted from any delay of the grain ships arriving in Rome each year. One of
the most important developments of the age, initiated by Constantine, was the extension of the
charitable functions of the church to encompass this established provisioning of food for the poor.
There was, however, a different emphasis. Grain handouts by the emperors and other patrons tended
to be targeted at a particular city and distributed primarily to buy off discontent in the hope of
preserving the security of the elites. Christians talked instead of the poor as a group to be privileged
with help because of their poverty.
It is hard to know whether the numbers of poor were increasing in this period. Standards of living
in the empire were comparatively high compared to what they would become after its collapse and
recent archaeological evidence shows many communities still thriving. However, marginal groups
were acutely vulnerable. The Mediterranean climate was variable and famine often struck, made
worse, the physician Galen reported, by the rapacity with which city dwellers stripped the rural areas
for their own needs. The disruptions caused by wars and invasion were leading to a refugee problem.
When Christians turned their focus on the poor, as they did with an intensity that had been lacking in
pagan society, they found a mass of destitute, shivering in their nakedness, lean with hunger, parched
with thirst, trembling with exhaustion and discoloured by undernourishment, as one preacher put it.5
John Chrysostom estimated that 10 per cent of the population of Antioch lived in absolute poverty.
The poor had, of course, to compete with others for funds. The vast building programmes ate into
resources that might have been spent on charity. One calculation of the cost of the gold alone for the
apse vault of St John Lateran equates it to the provision of food for a year for twelve thousand poor.
The revenues for the lighting of the basilica would have fed another fourteen hundred.6 When Cyril of
Alexandria launched a major programme of bribery to ensure that the emperor Theodosius supported
him in a theological dispute in 431, the gold and other exotic gifts involved could have fed and
clothed nineteen thousand poor for a year. This was the inevitable consequence of a church that now
saw itself as a major player in a society where wealth and opulent display brought prestige and
influence. Even ascetics who surrendered their wealth did not necessarily commit it to the needy. The
enormously rich Melania settled on one of her estates in North Africa and began renouncing her
wealth by endowing a local church so extravagantly that this church which formerly had been so very
poor now stirred up the envy of all the other bishops in that province.
However, what was achieved should not be dismissed. Basil of Caesareas great complex was
symbolic of numerous smaller projects, where bishops took it upon themselves to be the governor of
the poor. As the role became more institutionalised, each diocese seems to have drawn up its own
list of deserving poor (the matricula as it was known in the Latin west) so that three thousand
widows and orphans received help in fourth-century Antioch and there were 7,500 named poor in
Alexandria in the early seventh century. The great parchment volume on which Gregory kept his list of
poor in Rome survived until the ninth century. The special role of the bishops in helping prisoners is
highlighted in an early fifth-century law in which the emperor orders the local governors to give
clergy free access to prisons. There are even cases of clergy interviewing inmates to select those
deserving of appeal, while Bishop Paul of Gerasa built a new prison to separate prisoners who had
not yet been tried from those convicted.
Bishops were faced with many challenges. The church was attempting to expand its own
boundaries against resilient and often resentful communities of Jews and pagans as well as the many
Christian groups that had now been excluded by Theodosius laws. It is fascinating to see the range of
strategies they employed. On the one hand Ambrose survived, if precariously, his confrontations with
the emperors. In Constantinople, on the other, John Chrysostom succeeded in building up a mass of
support from the poor through the power of his sermons but, when challenged by rival bishops who
exploited the offence he had caused the empress Eudoxia (see p. 299), the rioting that broke out in his
favour only damaged his case. Unlike Ambrose, he had never learned how to build up a wider
community that he could control to his own ends. He finished his life in exile. Other bishops, like
Basil of Caesarea, were more successful in combining the traditional role of patron with a
programme of charitable works that made their position unassailable. The Homoian emperor Valens
respected the Nicene Basil so highly for his efficiency and keeping of good order that he even used
him on official business.

The coming of Christianity involved much more than the extension of the teaching of the gospels to
society. It required major shifts in the way power was exercised and wealth distributed in ways that
often seemed in conflict with each other. None of this involved a radical reordering of society. Very
gradually bishops became the core of a conservatively structured society and with lasting effect.
Twenty-six senior bishops of the Church of England are still entitled to places in the British House of
Lords and over the centuries have often acted as upholders of aristocratic tradition.
 INTERLUDE TWO
The Art of Imperial Christianity
VERY SOON AFTER CONSTANTINES EDICT OF TOLERATION OF 313, Aquileia, one of the richest cities of
northern Italy, commissioned a great double basilica. One part was for catechumens, the other for
those already baptised. Its floor was covered with rich mosaics only rediscovered under medieval
silt in the early twentieth century. The themes are very similar to those of earlier Christian art: Jonah
and the whale, fishermen and the Good Shepherd. Yet this was now an opulent and public display.
Money from both Christian and imperial sources was poured into Christian buildings, their
decoration and all the fittings, including jewelled gospel books, their illuminated pages and gold or
ivory reliquaries.
There are a very few examples of halls set aside for Christian worship from before 312. After his
conversion, Constantine adapted the traditional Roman audience hall, the basilica, to form the first
public churches at the Lateran Palace (now St John Lateran) and over the burial place of St Peter.
Early examples that survive in Rome are Santa Sabina and Santa Maria Maggiore, both from the early
fifth century. Santa Sabina reused discarded Roman columns but is among the first buildings to join
them with arches, an important development for later church architecture. Often an atrium, a covered
entrance hall, stood in front of the entrance to the basilica. Paulinus of Nola recalls how pilgrims
would wash themselves at the atrium to St Peters before entering the shrine.
A very different centrally planned building form evolves for churches built as mausolea, or over
the burial places of martyrs. While the first St Peters is essentially a basilica shape with transepts,
Santa Costanza, the mausoleum of Constantines daughters Constantina and Helena just outside Rome,
is circular with an ambulatory running below the central dome. The same format is used for
baptisteries which were now built separately from churches to reflect the special nature of the
ceremony and the large numbers of adults converting. Many baptisteries were octagonal, as it was
believed that the world began on the eighth day (after seven days of creation) and Christ was
resurrected on the eighth day of the Passion. The finest examples are the baptisteries built in Ravenna
by both orthodox and Arian communities in the second half of the fifth century. Other centralised
buildings were constructed over the site of the nativity in Bethlehem (again in an octagonal shape)
and at the earliest Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The most extraordinary architectural
achievement in this form is San Vitale in Ravenna, again an octagon through the arcades of which one
enters an ambulatory and a single chancel where the mosaics commemorating the recovery of
Ravenna by Justinian and Theodora are displayed. Even more magnificent, with its great dome
suspended on four pendatives, is Santa Sophia, the imperial church in Constantinople (completed in
its present form by Justinian in 563).
All inhibitions about decoration had now vanished. In St John Lateran, five hundred pounds of
gold were needed simply to gild the apse. Mosaics were set so that the lighting set off varied
reflections. There were so many lamps in St John Lateran that estates were set aside to provide
income for their maintenance. In the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem the mosaics were so fine that
over four hundred were needed for each ten centimetre square.
The traditionalists were not happy. Let them have their basilicas glittering with gold and
ornamented with the ostentation of expensive marble, held up by the splendour of columns; let them
also have extensive property, from which one runs the risk of losing the true faith as one put it.
Christians had to formulate new approaches to art to justify the massive expenditure. In the New
Testament the only text which could be used in support was the gold, frankincense and myrrh offered
Jesus as an infant and the heavenly city filled with precious stones described in the Book of
Revelation. The Old Testament was more helpful. The Song of Songs has a mass of imagery of
jewellery, gold and ivory. The beloved himself, often seen as a personification of Christ, has a head
of gold.
Platonism underpinned the approach to treasure, as in so many other spheres of Christian theology.
Plato had believed that the material world could only be an imitation of what went beyond, but it was
possible to have hints from what could be seen on earth of the glories of heaven. Pseudo-Dionysus,
writing around 500, argues that if a form for heavenly beings is to be found among precious stones
one must think if they are white that they are images of light, if red of fire, if yellow, of gold, if green,
of youth amid the flower of the soul. For each form you will find an image which will lead the soul
aloft. One of the most evocative symbolic representations of treasure comes from the Arian
baptistery in Ravenna.
Christian iconography developed to meet the needs of a religion linked to empire. The
transformation in ideology can be seen in representations of Christ. Traditional images such as that of
the Good Shepherd vanish as Christ becomes absorbed into imperial iconography. In the Christ as
shepherd in the Mausoleum of Gallia Placidia in Ravenna from the first half of the fourth century, the
shepherd is shown with a golden cross, gold tunic and purple mantel. Another development is Christ
as traditio legis, the passer on of the new covenant. The coming of Christ has led to the supersession
of the Law and Christ now hands on the new covenant to Peter or Paul as his representative on earth.
A good example, from the middle of the fourth century, comes from Santa Costanza in Rome.
By 390 in San Pudenziana, also in Rome, Christ is transformed into a Roman magistrate, the
earliest Christ in Majesty. The fully frontal Christ, to become such a powerful element of Byzantine
art, echoes portrayals of the emperor in relief sculpture of the period. In fact, one might say that Christ
has become transformed into the emperors own God. He can even be shown as a warrior. The Christ
in majesty is a heavenly figure who has transcended death. One of the most interesting features is a
reluctance to show Christ suffering on the cross. There are scenes from the last week of the Passion,
as on the Junius Bassius sarcophagus, but not of the crucifixion itself. The carved panel of the
crucifixion on the door of the basilica of Santa Sabina shows Christ with his arms outstretched but no
cross at all. Often a Chi-Rho becomes the symbol of the cross as victory. One reason perhaps is the
difficulty of knowing whether Christ as part of the Godhead can be shown dead or, if alive, as
suffering.
As the Nicene creed becomes orthodox and Christ is subsumed into the Godhead, the Arian Goths,
in contrast, preserved a more human subordinate Jesus. In the Arian church of Sant Apollinare
Nuovo in Ravenna, the scenes from Christs life show him in two sequences first as a young man and
then as a bearded older one to make the point that he aged as a human would. When the Byzantines
took over the church in the mid-sixth century, they portrayed their Christ on a throne in majesty to
make the contrast. The Virgin Mary is also by now elevated to an imperial figure on a throne.
In so far as one can see a trend in Christian art between 300 and 600, it involves first the
integration of Christian symbols into imperial iconography and then the transformation of the church
into a transitional setting for those who wish to focus on heaven. Paulinus placed an inscription on the
entrance to his shrine for St Felix at Nola which makes the point well: Christs worshippers take the
path to heaven by way of this lovely sward. An approach from bright gardens is fitting, for from here
is granted to those who desire it their departure to holy Paradise.
 CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
An Obsession with the Flesh
PARCHMENTS ARE DYED PURPLE, GOLD IS MELTED INTO LETTERING, manuscripts are dressed up in
jewels, while Christ lies at the door naked and dying.1 The ascetic scholar Jerome was among many
who were appalled by the new opulence of the church. Only a hundred years earlier bishops had been
in hiding, their sacred texts were being seized and any display of open ostentation would have been
destroyed. Now the church was flaunting its wealth and actively seeking to dominate city life. Jerome
wrote that the history of the church was one of decline, from the apostles down to the excrement of
our time. Cassian, one of the most influential early writers on monasticism, noted how the contrast
between the commitment of the apostles and the laxity of the contemporary church provided an
incentive for a withdrawal from the world. Those who did not identify more fully with the sufferings
of Christ might lose their chance of salvation. As she lay dying, Macrina, the ascetic sister of Gregory
of Nyssa and Basil of Caesarea, prayed: Thou that didst break the flaming sword and didst restore to
Paradise the man that was crucified with Thee and implored Thy mercies, remember me, too, in Thy
kingdom; because I, too, was crucified with Thee, having nailed my flesh to the cross for fear of
Thee, and of Thy judgments have I been afraid. Let not the terrible chasm separate me from Thy elect.
Macrina fears she is missing out on the suffering required of her.
The Greek word askesis means discipline or training. It was used when the body underwent
abstinence in order to achieve athletic or spiritual ends. The ascetic does not necessarily despise the
body as such but recognises that it is vulnerable to outside pressures and these must be actively
challenged. Any corruption by wealth or the surrender to greed and sexuality are to be avoided. The
philosopher of asceticism was Plato, many of whose dialogues explore the ways in which the
emotions subvert the search for ultimate truth. This requires the elevation of the soul and the
recognition that only the application of reason can lead one on to knowledge. The most sophisticated
Christian proponent of this view was Evragius of Pontus (died 399) who followed Origen and,
through Origen, Plato, in writing of the natural state of the soul before its fallen state when desire and
ambition corroded it. This natural state Evragius termed it apatheia can be regained through an
active mastery of specific temptations, the seven deadly sins of later Catholic orthodoxy. Evragius
was by far the most influential contributor to the literature of eastern asceticism.
The Christian asceticism of the fourth century went far beyond mere philosophical speculation in
its intensity and violent rejection of any form of material comfort. It found inspiration in the sufferings
of Christ on the cross and the early experiences of the Israelites. The most important model from the
Old Testament was Moses. God had revealed himself to Moses in the Burning Bush on the edge of the
desert and had given him his commandments on Mount Sinai. There followed forty years of
wandering in the desert before the Israelites reached the Promised Land. So those who follow God
obediently through hardship will achieve some form of bliss. Basil of Caesarea and his brother
Gregory of Nyssa both used Moses as a pattern on which to conduct a life of, first education, then a
period of contemplation and finally a period of leadership. In the New Testament John the Baptist
emerges from the desert as the voice crying in the wilderness which can be linked back to the
prophecy in Isaiah (40.3). Then Jesus spends forty days in the desert fighting with the devil and
retreats there for contemplation. In Paul there is a greater emphasis on the destructive powers of
sexuality, an important ingredient in the Christian ascetic mix and one largely missing from the Old
Testament.
 The commitment to asceticism can be explored through the tortured life of Jerome, later honoured
as one of the four Doctors of the Church and the translator of the Hebrew and Greek scriptures into
Latin.2 Jerome, the son of well-off Christian parents from Stridon in Dalmatia, was sent to study in
Rome and appears to have followed the conventional route of mastering grammar, rhetoric and
possibly philosophy in the 360s. None of this undermined his Christian beliefs and he was baptised in
the capital. He was a restless youth, preoccupied with sexuality, touchy, yet needing the company of
others. There were few moments in his long life when he ever seemed emotionally at peace and when
he did live in society he seems to have offended others easily. Even if this was an age in which
asceticism was popular, it needed a certain type of personality to embrace it. Jerome was obsessed
with finding a haven for his troubled soul. Having fallen out with his family at home, he set out to the
east in search of fulfilment. He reached Antioch in Syria and then decided to settle in the desert.
For the ascetic elite, it was the Egyptian rather than the Syrian desert that was the most prestigious
destination. There was a dramatic contrast between the dark, fertile soil of the Nile valley and the red
soil of the wilderness beyond. The Egyptians had always portrayed the desert as the haunt of demons
and Christians believed that they were taking their souls to a battlefield when they retreated there.
Jerome would have known of Athanasius Life of Anthony that tells how Anthony was continually
assailed by a mass of imaginary beasts and the temptations of the devil disguised as a naked woman.
Already the Egyptian desert was filling up with hermits and small monastic communities. The Syrian
desert was experiencing the same influx and was gaining a reputation for being inhabited by
eccentrics who displayed their commitment through living on top of pillars (the famous Simeon
Stylites), loading themselves with chains, or choosing to live on a few dates and muddy water.
Jerome lived in the desert for two or three years. In later works of art he is usually portrayed as
alone against a setting of parched rocks (although sometimes, in medieval iconography, with a
friendly lion from whose paw he had removed a thorn), but it was not a complete withdrawal. A
friend from Antioch came out to visit him on a regular basis, bringing him his letters. He accumulated
a large library and he even had access to copyists who could provide him with texts he needed. As a
Latin speaker he was at first an outsider in Syria, so he mastered Syriac already a language widely
used for Christian texts and into which many others had been translated in addition to Greek. Next
he embarked on Hebrew. This was still very rare for a Christian but he found a convert from Judaism
to teach him and soon surpassed Origen in his command of the language.
Several of Jeromes letters survive from this period and show him as a lonely man, furious
whenever his attempted contacts with others were rejected. He struggled with his desires: Although
my only companions were scorpions and wild beasts, time and again I was mingling with the dances
of girls. My face was pallid with fasting and my body chill, but my mind was throbbing with desires;
my flesh was as good as dead, but the flames of lust raged in it. As with many ascetics of the period,
his sexual imagination fed on his isolation.
After leaving the desert Jerome spent two years in Constantinople studying with Gregory of
Nazianzus. He proved too pedantic a thinker ever to engage fully with the intricacies of Greek
philosophy. One can see from his writings how he clung to Nicene orthodoxy but failed to think
creatively beyond it. Even so, any contact with Greek philosophy must have been a broadening
experience and he revered Gregory. He was also introduced to the works of Origen, the greatest
exegete of the previous century, although he seems to have become far too dependent on them, with
unhappy results. Many of Origens commentaries on the scriptures are only known because they
appear, slightly modified, under Jeromes name!
Jerome now had a chance to return to Rome. Paulinus, the bishop whom Gregory had
unsuccessfully supported as Meletius replacement in Antioch, wished to travel to the capital to plead
with its bishop, Damasus, for support. Jerome joined his retinue alongside another prominent ascetic,
the rigidly Nicene Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus. Jeromes role may have been no more
than interpreter for these two Greek speakers but once Damasus, a cultivated man, met him, he
realised how useful someone of Jeromes learning could be, especially in dealing with difficult
problems in the scriptures. So began the relationship that led to Jerome taking on the task of
producing a complete translation of the scriptures into Latin from Greek and Hebrew originals.
Although Damasus court was known for its luxury, many aristocratic women in Rome had now
rejected wealth. Jerome offered himself as their mentor. A widow, Marcella, who had set up a
monastery in her home on the fashionable Aventine Hill, was his first contact. Marcella had read the
Life of Anthony and learned about the ascetic celebrities of the Egyptian desert from an exiled bishop
of Alexandria. A woman of some learning, she wanted to know more about the scriptures, especially
passages that troubled her. Attracted to her circle was the recently widowed Paula, who was
scattering her vast wealth on charitable projects, and Paulas young daughters, Blesilla and
Eustochium.
The relationship between this austere and socially inept scholar and these acolytes, who, if not
worldly in their behaviour, were used to society, was never likely to be an easy one. Although they
appear to have made their own commitment to virginity, Marcella and Paula in effect deciding not to
remarry, the girls were very young to have entirely renounced marriage. There may not have been
much joy in an arranged marriage with the attendant risks of dying in childbirth, but opting out
completely threatened the mores of the traditional Roman family and risked the virgins ending up as
social outcasts. In Milan Ambrose caused intense resentment when he tried to persuade local girls to
commit themselves at the altar to perpetual virginity. You offer a bridegroom? I have found a better.
You may tell tales of his fortune, vaunt his pedigree, extol his power. I offer someone with whom
nobody can compare, he told one protesting family when their daughter took refuge at his altar.
Jerome revelled in his new status. In his letters to his protges, he behaved as if he alone
understood the dangers of life, the threat of heretics, the possibility of sexual transgression, all the
snares the devil lays. He pestered Blesilla so often about her behaviour that her relatives became
furious with his intrusions. Finally, Blesilla, still recovering from an earlier illness, subjected herself
to a rigorous programme of fasting and mortification, the strain of which led to her death. Paula was
devastated but Jerome made things worse by proclaiming how much better off Blesilla was in heaven
and how shocked she would be to look down from her bliss to see her selfish mother in tears.
Undeterred by the widespread disgust he aroused, Jerome turned his attention to Eustochium who
had already as a teenager committed herself to perpetual virginity. The girl was subjected to Jeromes
most weighty and prurient letter on the glory of her status. It is a confused tract that sets out virginity
as the preferred state of God. The sexless lives of Adam and Eve in Paradise are the ideal and it is an
understandable consequence of their transgressions, he says, that their life on earth should begin with
the corruptions of sex! I cannot bring myself to speak of the many virgins who daily fall and are lost
to the bosom of the church, their mother: stars over which the proud foe sets up his throne and rocks
hollowed by the serpent that he may dwell in their fissures. Like many sexual ascetics, Jerome sees
sex everywhere. A glass of wine or a rich meal inflames lust. Even consorting with married women
was to be avoided by the professed virgin who should spend her time with other fasting women or in
prayer in her room. When lust tickles the sense and the soft fire of sensual pleasure sheds over us its
pleasing glow, let us immediately break forth and cry: The Lord is on my side: I will not fear what
the flesh can do unto me. Jerome even suggests that the only good result of a marriage can be the
production of more virgins. Marriage is the thorn from which roses are gathered. What is the
reward for Eustochiums abstinence? Here Jerome creates a picture of Jesus as the lover from the
Song of Songs seducing Eustochium in her bedroom. This is a theme that had been found in Jesus
sayings in the Gospel of Thomas: It is the solitary who will enter the bridal chamber, as if
renunciation on earth will somehow lead to sexual fulfilment in heaven.
These letters were widely distributed but Jerome could not claim a monopoly on the subject of
sex. There were more balanced Christian approaches. One Christian layman, Helvidius, set out a
reasoned exposition of the New Testament texts on the virginity of Mary to make it quite clear that the
gospel writers taught that she had lived with Joseph as his wife and had further children. He cited
earlier Christian authorities who agreed with him and then asked the vital question what was wrong
with being a good wife? Gods approval of marriage could be seen in the marriages of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob. Why was there a problem in Mary losing her virginity and becoming a mother?
Jerome could not resist a response. These were years in which the status of Mary had risen and her
life story had been fleshed out beyond the meagre details in the gospels. The Protoevangelium of
James (probably the second half of the second century) had told of Marys own conception as the
child of Joachim and Anna. At six months she was already walking and she was sent at age three for
service in the Temple. It was noticed how she had solemnly entered the building without looking back
at her parents and had danced on the steps of the Altar. The priests, sensing that there was something
special about her, had selected Joseph, here presented as an elderly man with children of his own, as
her protector. The annunciation by Gabriel follows and the narrative describes how Mary gives birth
in a cave outside Bethlehem. When a Salome, her sister according to some traditions, cannot believe
that she has retained her virginity and examines her, her hand is withered as a result of her disbelief.
Other texts fill out Marys later life to suggest that she was with Jesus throughout his life. It was
said that she was really present at the Last Supper but so busy managing the servants that she is not
mentioned. Then, after the crucifixion, she lives with John in Ephesus but rather than dying she falls
asleep, the Dormition, at which the apostles miraculously assemble around her bed. She is assumed
into heaven, the apostles standing in despair as she ascends upwards. The vast numbers of surviving
sermons which detail this story show that for many Christians the imagined life of Mary had became
as real as that of the Jesus of the gospels. Scenes from the Protoevangelium were shown on mosaics
and frescoes. So in the great basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, the fourth-century mosaic of
the annunciation shows her spinning the wool for the veil of the Holy of Holies in the Temple.3
Jeromes response to Helvidius is vituperative. He denigrates him personally, misrepresents his
views and presents his own interpretation of the gospel texts so as to suggest that the brothers and
sisters are, in fact, cousins. Mary remained a virgin throughout her marriage, he asserts, as indeed
did Joseph. Jerome draws on the letters of Paul to decry marriage as a destructive force that distracts
attention from the worship of God. Jeromes views were later elaborated to insist that Mary remained
physically a virgin, even during the birth of Christ. As such they became enormously influential and
fed into the movement that declared Mary Theotokos, bearer of God, at the Council of Ephesus in
431. Jerome discovered an alternative text, from Ezekiel (44:2), which he took out of context to
support her perpetual virginity: This gate will be kept shut. No one will open it to go through it,
since Yahweh the God of Israel has been through it, and so it must be kept shut. Mary was
increasingly contrasted with the temptress Eve and one result of her elevation was to cast women as
either virgins or whores. The impact on later Christian attitudes to sex was immense.
At a humbler level, the new emphasis on virginity did give a new status to those who openly
renounced marriage. In many cases these were widows who chose not to remarry and many of these
found important roles as givers of charity and founders of monasteries. The immensely wealthy
Olympias, a widow after only twenty days of marriage to the city prefect of Constantinople, took to a
life of renunciation, passing on her riches to the church. Her dress was mean, her furniture poor, her
prayers assiduous and fervent, and her charities without bounds, as one account put it. The
penetrating, if often hagiographic, accounts of these lives are an important literary development and
here asceticism had given an opportunity for women to be valued. Perhaps the most sophisticated life
is that of Macrina by her brother Gregory of Nyssa. The respect Gregory shows to his sister as he
describes her dying days demonstrates how he had transcended the conventions of an upper-class
upbringing. Even though he is one of the most highly educated men of his age, he acknowledges that
Macrinas lack of learning (she refused to read any pagan works) is no bar to her finding salvation.
Olympias and Macrina lived in settled homes surrounded by other committed women. Some
women were more adventurous. The two Melanias from Rome, one the grandmother of the other, led
lives on the move. Both were immensely wealthy. The elder Melania proclaimed that the deaths of
her husband and her two sons liberated her to serve the Lord and she had been one of the first
westerners to settle in Palestine. She gave help to Nicene supporters persecuted under Valens and so
her theological credentials were, after 381, impeccable. With Rufinus, a friend of Jeromes from his
childhood studies in Rome, she founded a monastery on the Mount of Olives. She later returned to
Rome to persuade her granddaughter, who lived with her husband in chastity, to move east. The
younger Melania is recorded in Sicily, North Africa, Egypt, Syria and in Constantinople, where she
became a friend of Eudocia, the pious empress of Theodosius II. Her wealth extended to buying
islands for monasteries, the freeing of some eight thousand slaves and the care of captives. An even
more vivid record of a womans travels survives in the diary of a Spanish nun, Egeria, who spent
three years on pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the 380s. It is remarkable how easily Egeria was able
to travel she must have been wealthy enough to have her own retinue and she shows a keen
interest in archaeology of the sites she visits and their links to scripture.
Jerome was about to have his own pilgrimage to the Holy Land. When Damasus died in 384, the
feeling against Jerome in Rome boiled over. There was some form of official condemnation that
forced him to leave the city. His reputation was damaged further when it was heard that Paula and,
later, Eustochium had left to join him. The gossip about their relationship was probably no worse than
that in similar situations today but Jerome, always quick to take offence, was outraged at the
insinuations buzzing around Rome. Jerome associated his rejection with those endured by Christ and
Paul and cast Rome, to which he would never return, as the Babylon, the harlot arrayed in purple and
scarlet, to be found in the Book of Revelation.
When Paula had joined him, they embarked on an extensive tour of the Holy Land. Jerome had an
exhaustive knowledge of the scriptures and he was determined to visit every site from Bethlehem and
Jerusalem northwards to Galilee to absorb its atmosphere and connect to the texts he knew so well.
Paula proved a willing companion, taking to a donkey when necessary in more remote areas. Jerome
recorded her emotional responses as she encountered the stone floor from which Christ had been
resurrected or the stained column on which the flagellation had taken place. Already relics, real or
contrived, were gripping the Christian imagination. Every moment in the nativity story, from the fields
where the shepherds had heard the angels to the site of the massacre of the Holy Innocents, had been
identified. Paula was overcome when she was allowed to kiss the manger in Bethlehem. These were
the years when Christianity was able to spread itself as a religion of sacred places and the Holy Land
achieved a resonance that was to inspire the crusades for its recovery six hundred years later.
Jerome and Paula decided to settle in Bethlehem and it was Paulas money that financed the
founding of two monasteries, one for either sex. She would preside over the womens with
impressive austerity: A clean body and clean clothes betoken an unclean mind, was one of her more
forbidding announcements. Jerome was to head the other. He was to live there for the rest of his life.
There is no precise definition of a monastery in this period. The Greek word, first coined by Philo,
suggests the buildings of those who live alone (monos, alone) but this covered an enormous variety of
living arrangements. Some monks seem to have seen themselves as itinerant shock troops bent on the
destruction of paganism. It was gangs such as these that Theodosius banned, if only temporarily, from
cities in 390. Most monasteries were more stable. In Egypt supporters of the rejected Melitius from
Alexandria appear to have set up communities, as did the Manicheans, as early as the 320s.
Pachomius, a pagan of peasant stock who was converted to Christianity while in the army, was a
pioneer in the process. His background must have given him experience of communal living and he
seems to have enforced harsh discipline on his followers but he was a charismatic organiser who had
founded at least nine monasteries in the Egyptian desert before his death in 346. Pachomius saw his
communities as waiting in perpetual readiness for the Second Coming. There were pragmatic reasons
for sharing tasks but Pachomius also recognised that communal living in itself might have a
transcendent quality. Service to others through providing for their needs was part of the ascetic
journey; total withdrawal, in contrast, suggested self-indulgence. By 350, monasteries were springing
up throughout the Egyptian desert, some housing hundreds of monks.
An early visitor to the burgeoning monastic communities of Egypt, Palestine and Syria, was Basil
of Caesarea. Basil went on to found his own monastic community in Cappadocia but also thought
deeply about the purposes of communal life. He realised how difficult it was to sustain stable
communities of irascible eccentrics who competed with each other for ascetic stardom. It was
enormously important to establish a structure or rule of conduct. Everyday conflict could be avoided
if charity towards others was seen as central to community living. The despotism of abbots (the word
comes from the Hebrew Abba, father, and was first used of Pachomius) could be alleviated if humility
was made a mark of office. He must be compassionate, showing long suffering to those who through
inexperience fall short in their duty, not passing sins over in silence but meekly bearing with the
restive, applying remedies to them all with kindness and delicate adjustment.4 The purpose of
abstinence was not to take delight in self-torture; it was rather to remove the soul from pleasures that
might destroy it. The monastic rule of Basil, full of good sense and moderation, was to prove very
important as a model in western monasticism.
Jerome continued his task of translating the Hebrew and Greek scriptures in Bethlehem. He had his
own library there and was also able to exploit that of Origen in Caesarea. It was a demanding task.
Quite apart from the linguistic challenges of translating into Latin, there were variations between the
copies of different texts. A hundred and fifty years earlier Origen had complained how negligence or,
in some cases, deliberate additions or deletions to the originals of the scriptures had made his work
harder. One of Celsus complaints against the Christians was how they changed their texts when
difficulties arose.5 Scholars today identify at least four different types of Latin translations of the
scriptures and many more, now lost, must have been circulating in Jeromes day. Jerome prefaces his
own response to Damasus request for a new Latin translation of the gospels with his fears that he
will be ridiculed for choosing the wrong text from the many Latin variants scattered throughout the
Mediterranean world.
Before he left Rome, Jerome had completed revisions of the gospel texts, even though he often
chose those Latin versions that were closest to the Greek originals. He then completed the rest of the
New Testament which had only reached its final form in Greek a few years earlier (see Chapter
Nine.) He followed the new canon even though he recognised that the status of the Letter to the
Hebrews and the Book of Revelation was still questioned by some. In some cases, he seems to have
adopted translations from other sources rather than creating them himself. Now he tackled the Old
Testament using the original Hebrew text as the basis for his own translation. His aim, he told
correspondents, was to help Christians by giving them a more accurate version of the Hebrew with
which they could refute the Jews!
Yet Jerome soon touched on raw nerves. The Septuagint, the third-century BC Greek translation of
the Hebrew scriptures, had achieved a sacred status in the Christian world and when he claimed to be
offering a better rendition of the original Hebrew there was outrage (not least from western
conservatives such as Augustine). In the introduction to each new book, he hits back at his critics:
Filthy swine who grunt as they trample on pearls was one sally. There was only one text in which he
would admit the superiority of the Septuagint over the Hebrew, that from Isaiah stressing that it was a
virgin, and not merely the young woman of the original Hebrew text, who would conceive Jesus.
(Here he was at one with Justin Martyr who had made the same concession two hundred years
earlier.)
Jerome persevered until in 406, fourteen years after he had begun, he could present a full version
of the Bible in Latin. It was a remarkable achievement even though scholars note how some of his
translations, especially the later ones, are paraphrases and that he often adjusted the texts to
overemphasise those that could be used as prophecies of Christ. It remains unclear how much of the
work is really his own and as his original text was copied and recopied more variants appeared (the
fate of all manuscripts in the age before printing). Gradually, however, through the sixth to the ninth
centuries, Jeromes name remained attached to the Latin version, the Vulgate, or popular edition,
and was accepted in the west. It remains, with some revisions, the official Latin, and hence Roman
Catholic, translation of the Hebrew and Greek originals.
Jerome could never resist becoming caught up in the doctrinal controversies of the period even
though his tortuous personality often made things worse for himself. His old travelling companion,
Epiphanius, had become obsessed with heresies and had compiled, the Panarion (a medicine chest
of remedies), a detailed account of how the original purity of Christian living had been corrupted
first by the sin of Adam, then pagans and Jews and finally by a mass of alternative Christianities. One
of Epiphanius targets was Origen whom he berated for subordinationism and his denial of the
resurrection of the body. By now an elderly man, Epiphanius set off for the Holy Land determined to
root out any supporter of Origen, accusing the bishop of Jerusalem, John, of being the most prominent.
It was clear that he was deranged in his obsessions and John stayed well clear of any involvement
with him. It was all the more extraordinary therefore that Jerome, who had relied so heavily on
Origens scholarship, capitulated almost immediately to Epiphanius demands and agreed to abjure
his mentor.
His surrender did him no good. One of his oldest friends, Rufinus, who was also living a monastic
life in the Holy Land, refused to submit to Epiphanius. He set his dogs on his emissaries as soon as
they arrived at his monastery. Rufinus went on to make a Latin translation of one of Origens major
works, Peri archon, On the First Principles. Aware that in Rome as well as in the east Origen was
now under suspicion, Rufinus included a preface that told how one of the great Latin scholars of the
age (unnamed) had praised Origen as an inspiration. It was clearly Jerome he was referring to and, if
he was representing Jeromes earlier views, the preface was fair. Jerome responded by calling
Rufinus a heretical Arian; Rufinus retaliated by quoting passages of Jerome which had been lifted
from Origen.
These outbursts of Jeromes were noted for their abusive language and exposed the underlying
rigidity of his mindset. He squandered any chance of a reasoned debate by his contempt for his
opponents. Yet Jeromes outbursts also illustrate the debates of the day. One, already raised by
Helvidius, was over the place of sexuality in everyday life. In 393, Jerome received a tract by one
Jovinian that criticised celibacy and extreme asceticism. Jerome launched another vituperative
counter-attack. Typically it contained a sweeping assault on Jovinian for his way of life including
mixed bathing and debauchery. His writings were no more than his own vomit. Again Pauls
writings were distorted to suit Jeromes cause and even Peter was said to have renounced marriage
when he followed Jesus. One of Jeromes favourite ploys, used by other ascetics of the day, was to
link food and sex: Eating meat, drinking wine, having a well-filled belly there you have the seed-
bed of lust.
Another important debate of the day was over the place of relics and their powers of healing.
Traditional education stressed the importance of reason and many Christians were still reluctant to
endorse what appeared to be the growth of superstition in Christian worship. Another old
acquaintance of Jerome, Vigilantius, had written a tract criticising the veneration of relics. He went
on to link asceticism with superstition and argued that clergy were much better off if they were
married. The core of Jeromes argument in response, that relics were only a medium through which
worship was offered and that veneration was an acceptable form of piety, was unremarkable but
Jerome ruined his case by his virulent abuse of Vigilantius.
Despite the reams of his surviving invective, the true Jerome, obsessed as he was with real or
imagined enemies, eludes us. He was to endure a long old age. Paula died in 404, Eustochium, who
had joined her mother, in 417 and Jerome in 420, probably by this time in his mid-seventies. To the
end he was engaged in controversy. His last known letter is to the bishop of Rome asking him to cut
the followers of Pelagius, an opponent of Augustine, to pieces with Christs sword.
In later Christian iconography Jerome is shown either in the desert or in a study. He provides the
model of the monk who is also a scholar. Yet this model has to be viewed with caution. Jerome never
showed any genuine intellectual creativity or had the self-confidence to develop his own theology. In
his letter to Eustochium, Jerome told her of a dream that he, the classically educated Christian ascetic,
had had in which he had been flogged for preferring the works of Cicero over those of Christ. He had
vowed never again to neglect the scriptures. In the same letter he echoes Tertullian: What has Horace
to do with the psalter, Virgil with the evangelists, Cicero with the Apostle [Paul]? It was this attitude
that became the norm in the Christian west. Jeromes dream provides a foretaste of the growing
rejection of the world of classical scholarship in which he had been raised.6 While his work as a
translator can still be admired, his passionate invective did much to undermine Christianity as a home
of reasoned exposition.
 CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The End of Optimism
AUGUSTINE AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF SIN

THE THEOLOGY OF AUGUSTINE DOMINATES THE WESTERN TRADITION. For centuries Augustines view of
humankind, his attitudes to free will, the certainty of eternal punishment in hell for most, and his
support for a hierarchical misogynist society were to become part of the European religious, and, to
some extent, secular, heritage. Yet like his mentor the apostle Paul, he was a loner. His African
diocese was remote from the major centres of Roman intellectual life in the west when even in cities
such as Rome and Milan knowledge of Greek was fading. Despite being well educated, Augustine
was unable to read the letters of Paul in the Greek original. He was so cut off from the east that there
is no evidence that he even knew of the Council of Constantinople of 381 that had endorsed
Theodosius legislation on the Trinity. The breakdown of the western empire, in the very last years of
his life, went hand in hand with a collapse in literacy so, although his major works were preserved in
monastic libraries, few could appreciate them.
Augustines contribution to theology was to become influential only when the church of the west
became the most powerful in Europe after intellectual life re-emerged in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries. It was never healthy for a single man, whose theology was deeply caught up within his own
brilliant but tortured personality, to be given such prominence. The tragedy was that there were no
alternative theologies to put alongside his own and one reason for this was that he himself had denied
the possibility of free discussion and had even developed a rationale for persecution of rival
Christianities. It was to take centuries before Augustine could be viewed objectively, free of the
official role as the supreme auctoritas of the Christian tradition.1
None of this is to deny the originality of Augustine. He had an extraordinarily acute mind,
sweeping in its imagination, intuitive in teasing out the nuances of language, sensitive to the myriad
ways in which individuals reflect on the unknown. As a young man he showed a lively philosophical
instinct. As he became older and more embedded in the hierarchy of the church, the challenges of
justifying orthodoxy meant that he had to probe with greater skill the nature of God, the means by
which his purposes might be understood. So, for instance, his defence of the Nicene Trinity leads him
to an exploration of the philosophy of mind. This means that many later philosophers have found
something they can draw on from Augustine even if they find the overall tenor of his world view
dispiriting. With some five million words of his work still surviving (they were copied and recopied
relentlessly by medieval monks), there remains much to explore, especially in his sermons and letters.
Augustine was born in North Africa, in the city of Tagaste in 354. His mother Monica was a
Christian; his father Patricius, a civil servant, remained pagan until near the end of his life. Monica
was the stronger of the two and appears to have been overbearing at times. Their determination that
Augustine should succeed led to a traditionally elite education in Carthage, where Augustine mastered
rhetoric, and with it the possibility of social advancement as a teacher or civil servant like his father.
He began as a teacher in Carthage, although he was upset by the unruliness of his pupils. He was not
totally cut off from Christianity but his early reading of the scriptures had left him cold. He found the
masters of Latin prose so much more sophisticated and a reading of Ciceros Hortensius, with its call
to the joys of philosophy, more attractive. So was his (unnamed) consort, the mother of his son,
Adeodatus (who died young). Augustine was more social, at ease with physical relationships than,
say, Jerome or John Chrysostom. Although celibacy was later to be intrinsic to his Christian ministry,
he could accept that there might be a place for sexual desire within marriage and he talks at one point
of the love of truth as similar to the love of man for a womans naked body.2 He also acknowledges
without prurience the eroticism of the Song of Songs. In general, however, he was suspicious of
sexual desire.
In 383 Augustine made an important psychological break. Leaving behind his mother, who was
distraught at the betrayal, he sought a new life in Rome. After he had settled as a teacher, a patron,
the senator Symmachus, secured him a prestigious appointment as city orator in Milan. From here his
future within the imperial hierarchy might have been assured, especially with the good marriage that
his status made possible. His mother followed in the hope of arranging one.
Yet Augustines conscience always gnawed at him as did his desire to understand the deepest
nature of things. He had already become attracted to the Manicheans. In the eastern empire,
Theodosius had decreed the death penalty for membership of certain Manichean sects in 382, partly
because of their origins, through the third-century AD prophet Mani, in Romes enemy the Persian
empire, so Augustine was joining a marginal and unpopular group. The Manicheists believed in the
overwhelmingly evil nature of the world, symbolised as darkness. The forces of light, found weakly
in the human soul and, more completely, in the sun and the moon, had to be consolidated to fight back.
Christ was one of the divine forces that would help reunite the sources of light and the Manicheists
also revered Paul. (An apocryphal Acts of Paul was among their sacred writings.) The sect was
only a temporary resting place for Augustine. His acute philosophical mind saw the inadequacies of
classifying the entire material world as evil and he became disillusioned with those Manicheists who
failed to live up to their own standards. He knew enough of Greek science to realise that eclipses
were predictable, not sudden manifestations of evil as the Manicheists claimed.
Augustine now became fascinated by Plato and notably his third-century AD Neoplatonist follower
Plotinus. The latter was a man whose sophistication was truly absorbing even if Augustine had to
make do with Latin translations of his works. At the same time he was beginning to explore
Christianity. In Milan he listened to the sermons of Ambrose and became more convinced that the
scriptures had something to offer when the bishop assured him that the cruder passages could be
understood allegorically rather than literally. Ten years later, in the mid 390s, in his Confessions,
Augustine was to detail his hesitant moves towards his conversion to Christianity. He was finally
convinced by verses of Paul, Romans 13:1314, not in revelling and drunkenness, not in lust and
wantonness, not in quarrels and rivalries. Rather arm yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ: spend no
more thought on nature and natures appetites.
In the months following his conversion, Augustine did not envisage a career in the church, even
though he committed himself to celibacy. Rather he seems to have been drawn to a mystical
Christianity in which the influence of the pagan Plotinus, and behind Plotinus, Plato, was still
dominant. He withdrew with a group of friends to the countryside near Milan and they recorded their
own individual thoughts and discussions. Works such as the Soliloquies and the Contra academicos
(Against the Sceptics) show a mind that is open to new ideas. Augustine would always favour Plato
over Aristotle, not least because Plato wrote so much more engagingly (something which mattered to
Augustine). He talks rather condescendingly of the empiricist and logician Aristotle as a man of
outstanding intellect, no match for Plato in style but well above the common herd. Augustine was
never one for abstract logic or building up knowledge from empirical evidence. In his Soliloquies, in
which he creates a dialogue between himself and Reason, Reason asks Augustine what he wants to
know:
I want to know God and the soul
Nothing more?
Nothing at all.
In these early works Augustine is aware of the difficulties in finding certainty. One might argue that
it is the mark of a true philosopher that he understands the limits of reason and language and the
immense difficulty in saying anything of certainty beyond this. (Wittgenstein is a fine example of this.)
So if there is a consensus that the universe began with a Big Bang, one then uses every method
possible to discover what might have existed before this without necessarily believing one will
succeed. Plato and Aristotle are both within this tradition Plato did not expect his trainee
philosophers, his future Guardians, to grasp the full nature of the ultimate reality before the age of
fifty. Augustine worries about what can be known, from reason and through the senses. He knows that
there must be some greater truths but he has, so far, failed to discover the means to access them.
These happy days of comradely speculation in rural Italy were not to last. Augustine returned to
North Africa in 388. The church desperately needed men with the skills his education had given him.
In Africa in particular, the orthodox church, now committed to Nicaea, was still in schism with the
Donatists while the majority of the population remained pagan. Augustine was induced to become a
priest in 391 and then four years later bishop of the coastal town of Hippo. He remained there until
his death in 430 and his immense learning ensured that he became the spokesman for the North
African church. It was another turning point and in the mid 390s he reflected on the process by which
he had come to the Christian faith in his famous Confessions the word carrying here the sense of
testament. It is the first time in history that an autobiography is not simply a list of achievements or
self-justifications but an examination of the interior of a mind as it searches for ultimate meaning.
Augustine portrays God as always there, waiting as it were for recognition while he, a miserable
sinner, persisted in refusing to acknowledge this. The point is a crucial one for Augustine. Through
pride, the corruption of the soul, or a refusal to carry out the search at all, we fail to appreciate the
reality of a loving God.
The apostle Paul had already provided Augustine with the verse that had led to his conversion. In
the mid 390s Augustine became obsessed with Paul, above all the Letter to the Romans on which he
wrote numerous studies. One statement of Paul from Romans 7:1825 became especially influential.
It includes: For I know that nothing good lodges in me in my unspiritual nature, I mean for though
the will to do good is there, the deed is not. The good which I want to do, I fail to do; but what I do is
the wrong which is against my will; and if what I do is against my will, clearly it is no longer I who
am the agent, but sin that has its lodging in me. Only God, through Jesus Christ, can save one from the
slavery of sin.
Many would read this passage as a personal account by Paul of his own struggles and of no
universal relevance but it echoed something in Augustines own experience and he chose to use it as
the basis for a theology of the human condition. While Plato recognised how sensual appetites
hindered the search for ultimate truth, Augustine wished to find a more comprehensive explanation
and he developed the idea of the original sin, the disobedience of Adam and Eve in Eden. This had
been passed down from generation to generation through the act of sexual intercourse, so that even
babies were born with it. Augustine may have drawn on Tertullian, Cyprian and Ambrose, all men
preoccupied with sin, for the idea but he was to develop it in a much more sophisticated way (for the
first time in a letter to a priest, Simplicianus, who was to succeed Ambrose as bishop of Milan).
Later he backed it with a verse from Romans (5:12) that he interpreted as confirming that sin entered
the human race through Adam (although this may have been a misinterpretation of the original due to a
misleading Latin translation). Augustine did believe that infant baptism might have some effect in
securing the grace of God but it was by no means certain.
Perhaps a loving God, realising that no single individual had a chance to escape the guilt of Adam,
would act to forgive and save the vast majority of the human race. Augustine agreed that this was
indeed possible but so angered was God by the sin of Adam that he was justified in offering his
grace only to a few. There was no knowing who these lucky ones would be and there was no way
individuals could better their chances. So, for Augustine, the church could never provide total
security and he would have been aghast at Christians who claim to know for certain that they have
been saved.
In his final major work, The City of God, Augustine seems almost to rejoice in the unforgiving
nature of God: The whole of mankind is a condemned lump; for he who committed the first sin
[Adam] was punished, and along with him all the stock which had its roots in him. The result is that
there is no escape for anyone from this justly deserved punishment, except by merciful and
undeserved [ sic] grace; and mankind is divided between those in whom the power of merciful grace
is demonstrated, and those in whom is shown the might of just retribution.3
Augustines personality warmed to the reality of hell fire. Week after week, he must have stood
before his congregation, knowing, according to his beliefs, that even though they had been baptised,
that many engaged in good works, and others were people he was personally attracted to, most of
them would still end up burning for eternity. In the final chapters of The City of God, he relishes
depriving them of any hope that good works, the intercession of the saints, or the sacraments will save
them. He even cites the case of the salamander to show, apparently, that a creature can be enveloped
in fire without being destroyed and he berates the rationalists for their view that a body cannot burn
without being consumed. So the burning of hell can be eternal, the body surviving to experience it.4
These last pages, written when Augustine was an old man, can only be explained as the writings of
someone who has severed emotional contact with those around him. He shows no compassion for the
tragedy of human existence which his theology left exposed.
If human beings are embedded in sin, can they freely decide to do good? Augustine argued that the
only act of true free will was Adams decision to sin, and he violently opposed those who believed
that human beings had the ability to save themselves. This not only aroused opposition to him within
the church, it also confronted the entire tradition of Greek philosophical thought which was rooted in
the belief that not only were human beings curious by nature but that they could achieve a greater
understanding of any area of knowledge through the exercise of rational debate. One can see the
narrowing of Augustines thought in his use of the word curiositas, the desire to know. Already in the
Confessions he refers to curiositas as a disease, in that it tempts one to search for truths of nature,
which are beyond human understanding and which are of no intrinsic use. Later he implies that
curiositas is an indication of sin, the lack of proper humility before Gods creation.
This denigration of the search for understanding, and the ability of human beings to think
effectively for themselves, was to have a crucial impact on Augustines theory of knowledge. The
possibility in his earlier philosophical reflections that he might find effective ways of expanding what
can be known was thrown away by a different approach that understanding could be grasped by a
leap of faith. So he took a verse of Isaiah, 7:9: Unless you believe, you will not understand. Here
the mediating power of the reasoning mind was abandoned. No longer did Augustine believe, with
Plato, that one might begin with reason and see how far one could get; starting with reason was, he
argued, in itself irrational. So with the Nicene Trinity one did not need to explore the theology
rationally, one just had to believe it and then in some miraculous way it would be understood.
One result was that articles of faith became non-negotiable. If one made the leap and still did not
understand, that was doubtless due to the corruption of ones soul through original sin. Augustine was
too astute not to recognise the problems this raised. Suppose a subordinationist came along, armed,
perhaps, with a great deal more scriptural backing than Augustine could provide for the Nicene view,
and announced that by believing in subordinationism he understood it to be the truth. How did one
distinguish between his belief and that of Augustine? Augustine has little option but to fall back on the
concept of authority. He acknowledges that there are different authorities, each of which would claim
legitimacy for itself, but one can use reason to discriminate between authorities. However, hardly
surprisingly he opts for his own church. Famously Augustine said that he would not have believed the
gospels without the authority of the Catholic church. He also suggests that the survival of the church is
in itself proof of the rightness of its existence as the favoured organisation of God.
Those individuals who wilfully refuse to believe are, to Augustine, victims of their own
stubbornness. In one of his more positive statements, Augustine argues that one must orientate oneself
towards belief. He uses the word voluntas, or assent, a will to know. This is not a superficial
commitment to learning or mere acceptance of what is offered, it is something more powerful, a form
of love of God. Augustine argues that if one develops that love, then, when the leap of faith takes
place, the love will enable one to understand the reasons why a particular article of faith must be
believed as true knowledge. The problem is that Augustine has already argued that there is no
guarantee that God will love one back enough to save one from eternal punishment!
One of Augustines most influential works, De doctrina christiana, was written as a handbook to
the exploration of Christian study of the scriptures. His task was to explore the relationship between
secular knowledge and the newly determined canon of Christian sacred writings. In doing so he
overrode the traditional Roman programmes for approaching knowledge, of which the most famous
was by Marcus Terentius Varro (died 27 BC), in favour of a scheme of knowledge based on the
Christian texts with secular learning subordinate to them. De doctrina christiana has been described
as the founding charter of a Christian culture and in so far as it uses classical culture primarily as a
means to more fully understand the scriptures, the assessment seems justified. Although there is
immense controversy over the long-term impact of the book on intellectual life in the west, there is no
doubt that it conveyed the message that the main areas of traditional learning were of diminished
value in comparison to the teachings of the scriptures. One had to wait until Petrarch in the fourteenth
century before classical learning was again respected in its own right. (Petrarch made the point by
coining the term Dark Ages to describe the period between himself and these last years of the
empire.) Augustine has to be seen as one of the architects of darkness and it is a mark of his
narrowing perspective that he forgets that his own beliefs had evolved through extensive reading of
secular sources. He assumes all too readily that the truths he has culled from them are
incontrovertible.
It was inevitable that Augustine would be asked to defend the Nicene Trinity, especially the
problem of there being three divine forces, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but only one Godhead. In his
Confessions he admits to his own difficulties: Who understands the omnipotent Trinity? Yet who
among us does not speak of it, if it indeed be the Trinity that he speaks of? Rare is the soul that knows
whereof it speaks, whatever it may say concerning the Trinity. It was to take him some twenty years,
from 400 to 420, before he had completed a work with which he was satisfied. The Trinity is
certainly a massive achievement, above all in the determination Augustine shows in exploring every
aspect of the question not only from scripture but from a philosophical and psychological perspective.
Yet it is a mark of Augustines isolation that it was written with no input from the eastern theologians
the only commentator Augustine mentions in the entire work is Hilary of Poitiers.
The initial premise of The Trinity was that the Trinity was a mystery that could only be grasped
through faith. Furthermore the three members of the Trinity always acted in unison, however much
some passages in scripture appeared to suggest that one, God the Father in the Old Testament, for
instance, worked alone. Next, in the first four books of the work, Augustine had to take on those, the
subordinationists, including the Eunomians, who provided scriptural support for their beliefs. He had
some difficulties here and his reinterpretations of scripture do not always convince. Faced with the
mass of texts, in John, for instance, where Christ clearly says that he is sent by the Father, and thus
subordinate to the one who does the sending, Augustine has to argue that sent does not have its
normal meaning but refers only to God as the origin of Christ, as in God from God, Light from Light.
Is this any more than semantics? Again, when confronted with texts which cannot be interpreted other
than to suggest that the Son is less than equal to the Father (for instance, John 14:28, The Father is
greater than I), Augustine has to argue that these refer to Christ speaking in his human capacity, while
I and the Father are one (John 10:30) is Christ speaking in his divine capacity. So Christ shifts
between natures at will. One has to admire the agility with which Augustine wriggles his way through
every complication, but one feels that a subordinationist would be able to argue back with as much
success. (Augustine had a famous confrontation with an Arian bishop, Maximinus, on the issue in the
420s, a confrontation that many felt Maximinus won.)
The philosophical section of The Trinity (Books V to VII) has to deal with the difficulties of
translating words such as substance, essence and personality from Greek to Latin. It is, of course,
an interesting question whether such translations lose the essence of the argument in the process. In
the Greek world, the terminology had become so precise and had so many connotations that a less
philosophical language such as Latin could not embrace, that Augustine was certainly hampered in his
task. One only has to realise how limited the English the Word and the Latin verbum are compared
to the richness of logos to appreciate the problem. Yet this section of the work was to contain one of
the most explosive of Augustines innovations. He had argued that the only way in which the three
members of the Trinity could be distinguished from each other was through their relationship (one of
equality for Nicenes, of course). The Father and the Son can be distinguished by their relationship as
unbegotten and begotten. So where did the Holy Spirit fit in? In John 15:26 the Spirit is described
as processing from the Father. The Greek fathers had assumed that this meant processing from the
Father alone and it is a further mark of Augustines isolation that he does not seem to be aware of this.
He argued instead that the Spirit must be assumed to process from the Son as well, in order to
maintain an equal relationship between Father and Son. He therefore added the word filioque, and
from the Son. When the eastern theologians heard of the addition, they were outraged and the dispute
became one of the issues that divided the two churches. (The fact that a single phrase of Augustine
could divide the two churches is testimony to his immense influence.)
 However much Augustines arguments can frustrate, his imagination and the quality of his language
often inspire. He was determined to elevate the Trinity as the supreme example of Gods love and to
prove that God had provided the human mind with the capacity to grasp the mystery. The prompt was
provided by Genesis (1:26): Let us make man in our image and in our likeness. Augustine claims
that the mind, made in the image of God, is composed of three parts: the mind itself, its knowledge of
itself and its love of itself. These are equal and of the same substance as each other, just as the Trinity
is. Three faculties, memory, understanding and will, echo this and, Augustine argues, act together as a
single force, as the Trinity does. In short, God has impressed a Trinitarian make-up on the human
consciousness through which the essence of the Trinity can be understood. Of course, Augustine was
acting arbitrarily by dividing the mind into three and naming attributes which fitted his argument but it
is a good illustration of how he was able to go beyond mere theology, here into the psychology of
human consciousness, to broaden his argument.
Augustine was living in a disintegrating empire. In contrast to the panic of others, Augustine took
the news calmly that Rome had suffered a sack by the Goths under Alaric in 410. (It is worth
remembering that the Goths were Christian, even if of the Arian variety, and respected the churches
of the capital.) He responded with his last major work, The City of God. He drew on the early
chapters of Pauls Romans to suggest a world of the saved and the unsaved but he elaborated this to
define two cities, one of the rejected, the city of the world dominated by the very lust of
domination5 and one of those who would be saved and finally find peace and fulfilment in the love of
God.
The work provides a history of Rome in which it is shown that its addiction to paganism has led to
its eventual doom. Augustine makes no reference to the view, which Eusebius and others had
championed, that with the coming of Constantine one had entered a new era in which the church
would triumph. This is still essentially a pagan world. After his depiction of the City of God as the
only true home of peace and justice, the most influential part of the work comes when Augustine
describes the city of the world as it exists on earth, with those to be saved, still unidentified living
in its midst. This is as close as he ever gets to a work of political philosophy.
Augustine is, of course, constrained by his view that all are sinners and one cannot know who will
be saved after death, so his government is one which has to be preoccupied with maintaining order
among those who lead lives of sinful disorder. The peace of the whole universe is the tranquillity of
order. Order is the arrangement of things equal and unequal in a pattern which assigns to each its
allotted position. Authority becomes an end in itself. Augustine, citing Paul, stresses that one must
obey the powers that be even if they act corruptly.
Augustine rejects two alternatives. The first is the tradition developed by all the pagan
philosophers that the purpose of good government is to ensure the flourishing of the city. Whether
philosophers favoured the autocracy of a ruling few (Plato) or some system of oligarchy or
democracy, the end was the creation of a community in which virtue could be cultivated and the
citizens would have the opportunity for personal fulfilment through participation as citizens.
Augustine would have none of this. He shows that any hope that human beings can be good is a
chimera. The most that could be hoped for is that the community would survive as an entity as a result
of being kept in order and that Christians would maintain their freedom to worship. They are merely
pilgrims, adrift and in exile until they reach the heavenly city that is unattainable on earth. Augustine
upheld hierarchy, tolerated torture and executions and saw slavery as a punishment for sin. The
second alternative he rejects is any form of society based on the gospels. They do not even appear to
provide a model that Christian leaders might aspire to. Christians are expected to behave as harshly
to the orders beneath them as the pagans do. So torture may be ordered even if the innocent suffer, and
the church is justified in persecution. Augustine provides a model which justifies the linking of
Christianity to authoritarian systems of government.
Augustine had to fight for his beliefs that humanity was hopelessly compromised by original sin
against one group of his fellow Catholics, the followers of Pelagius. Pelagius was a monk, never as
far as is known an ordained cleric, from Brittany. He moved to Rome in about 380 and was a highly
respected ascetic in aristocratic circles at the same time as Jerome was there. He taught that
renunciation was a choice that could easily be made as God had endowed human beings with free
will. Their ability to use reason was a mark of their supremacy over the animals. Human beings were
not totally dependent on the grace of God although God would provide support for those who
committed themselves to him. Pelagius gave the example of a man in a boat who had set out under his
own power to row in a defined direction (towards spiritual goodness). God would help him on his
way just as the wind might. To Pelagius, Augustines view that human beings were born so deeply
corrupted by original sin that they could not act to save themselves simply did not make sense. What
was the point of Jesus giving out commandments, as was recorded in the gospels, if human beings
were so full of sin that they could not choose to follow them? One must trust on the essential goodness
of God, not be cowed by his anger as one so easily thwarted by Adam.
Despite Augustines growing influence in the west, these two theological approaches co-existed
and in the east Pelagius actually achieved an endorsement of his own approach at a council in
Jerusalem. This was after he had been denounced by Jerome who had tried unsuccessfully to
persuade two bishops to accuse Pelagius of heresy. Augustine now weighed into the controversy and
two councils of North African bishops condemned Pelagius, as well as his leading disciple, one
Caelestius. The fight was then on to win over the bishop of Rome. Augustine gained the upper hand
when he wrote to the incumbent, Innocent, suggesting that the exercise of free will by individual
Christians would undermine the authority of the bishops. Innocent acquiesced in the condemnation but
allowed Pelagius and Caelestius to appeal. Pelagius wrote out his own defence and sent it in;
Caelestius went to Rome in person just as a new bishop, Zosimus, a Greek who had no relationship
with Augustine, had taken office. Pelagius and Caelestius personal submissions to Zosimus
persuaded him that they were not heretics.
However, now the emperor Honorius intervened. Apparently worried by Pelagius attacks on
corruption, he condemned him from his court in Ravenna. There were rumours that Honorius had been
swayed by bribery provided by one of Augustines colleagues, the bishop of Tagaste. At yet another
council, the North African bishops recorded their support of the emperor. Zosimus had to submit to
Honorius command, infuriating eighteen Italian bishops in his diocese who continued to support
Pelagius.
One of the dissenting Italian bishops was Julian, bishop of Eclanum, and he now became the
leader of the opposition to Augustine. The contrast between the two men was significant. Augustine
was now an old man and it is not unfair to say that his mind often drifted into fantasy. However
difficult it was to find reasoned, or even unambiguous, scriptural support for the idea, the doctrine of
the resurrection of the body at the Last Judgement was now accepted as orthodoxy. Augustine could
not resist telling readers of The City of God exactly how they would reappear in this imagined world.
He is very precise. Everyone will keep their sex, including their genitals, although these will be
relieved of desire. Everyone will appear as they were in their maturity the old in a younger form,
children in an older one, even if they died as babies. All bodies will be perfect, amputated limbs will
be fixed back on. One warms to Augustines confident promise that fat people and thin people need
not fear that in that world they will be the kind of people that they would have preferred not to be
while they are in this world. He even describes how people who have been eaten by cannibals will
be reconstituted. One of the central tenets of Greek philosophy, that one should know where the limits
of knowledge lie, had been totally eclipsed by this feat of speculative fantasy.
Julian, on the other hand, was more rooted in the real world. The use of medical and legal
analogies in his writings suggests that he was able to integrate secular knowledge into his theology
much more readily than Augustine was prepared to. He was a forerunner of Thomas Aquinas in
acknowledging the importance of rational thought. God would not have allowed his two major gifts to
the human race, scripture and reason, to conflict with each other, so one could be sure that reason
would always find the correct understanding of scripture. There was no need to accept something just
as a matter of faith. Against Augustine, Julian argued that it would devalue God if he had allowed
sinful souls to be brought into being and so he must have created each soul anew. It had no link with
earlier generations as Augustine imagined. God even gave us sexual desire and it clearly had a good
purpose; without it human beings would not procreate. Of course, human beings had to use their God-
given free will to control their sexual instincts, but there was no reason why this should be especially
difficult. Sexual desire did not rage for Julian in the way it did in the fevered mind of the likes of
Jerome. Julian also stressed the humanity of Christ. It is because Christ is close to us in nature that he
is an inspiration. If his divinity was elevated then he would not be nearly so impressive an exemplar.
While Pelagius appears to have lived his life on the defensive, Julian was determined to go on the
attack. He was clearly a man of compassion during a time of famine he is known to have distributed
his possessions to the poor and he was repelled by Augustines obsession with the sinfulness of
mankind and the way in which he seemed to accept the burning of unbaptised infants without emotion.
He let Augustine know of the depth of his disgust, through highlighting Augustines most bleak
suggestions, among them the idea that deformity in a baby was a manifestation of its original sin. He
forced Augustine into defensive responses.
The Pelagian debates have been seen as the first theological controversy to take place within the
western church (a reminder of how far the west lagged behind the east in such debates). The exchange
with Julian was still on-going when Augustine died but it was by now impossible to save Pelagius
and Julians views. The central issues related to whether human beings could control their fate and
whether God was a force for goodness in the human world, on the side of humanity rather than against
it. Pelagius could, of course, be criticised for his optimistic view of human perfection, as if being
good was simply a matter of willing it. Augustines vision of a church that contained the sinners as
well as the saints and the self-righteous was attractive but the ultimate fate Augustine decreed for
most of them, saints or sinners, at the hands of a God still smarting from his rejection by Adam and
Eve, was not. Most serious of all, the controversy had been settled through power politics and,
probably, bribery rather than through rational argument.
The episode marks a low point in the history of western theology. Human beings were for
centuries defined predominantly in terms of their sinfulness (and as such, this marks the triumph of
Pauls Letter to the Romans) and this filtered through into political philosophy in the sense that it
made authoritarian societies easier to justify. It took centuries before secular forces and alternative
ways of defining human values were able to reassert themselves the achievement of the
Enlightenment. The way that the dispute was settled did nothing to promote theology as a means of
finding ultimate truth. As with the disputes over the Trinity, theologians had been reduced to the
subservient role of finding arguments to support what the authorities had already decreed as doctrine.
Augustine died in 430 just as the Vandals, one of the Gothic tribes, had reached the gates of Hippo.
Miraculously his library was saved and his preeminence as the theologian of Catholic Christianity
ensured that it was copied. Over five hundred of his sermons survive in addition to most of his major
works. He has to be acknowledged as one of the greatest minds of late antiquity, if not equal, say, to
his mentor Plotinus. However, in an age where horizons were narrowing, his intellectual dominance
became corrosive. By the time of Gregory the Great, at the end of the sixth century, the major figures
of Latin Christianity were reading only Augustine. No tradition of learning can flourish on the
adulation of a single individual, however brilliant. The combination of his authority as a teacher and
his pessimism about the human condition was a major factor in stifling independent thought in the
medieval era. All too often the works of Augustine would be brought out as a battering ram against
those who began to speculate freely.
Equally, Augustine helped create a mood. Cardinal Lothario dei Segni, who came to the papal
throne as Innocent III in 1198, wrote what was a best seller by medieval standards, On the Contempt
of the Worlds. It was as if the thought of Jerome and Augustine had fused in his religious imagination:
Man has been formed of dust, clay, ashes and, a thing far more vile, of the filthy sperm. Man has been
conceived in the desire of the flesh, in the heat of the sensual lust, in the foul stench of wantonness
His evil doings offend God, offend his neighbours, offend himself Accordingly, he is destined to
become the fuel of the everlasting, eternally painful hellfire: the food of the voracious consuming
worms.
The European mind was too vital to be cowed by this but this ideology of pessimism, with all that
implied for the sapping of intellectual vigour, was certainly prevalent in the centuries to come.
 CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Divine but Human
WHILE AUGUSTINE WAS WRITING AND PREACHING IN NORTHERN Africa, events were moving fast in the
eastern empire. On the death of Theodosius I in 395, the empire was split between his two young
sons, Honorius in the west and Arcadius in the east. Power sharing between emperors had become
common since the time of Diocletian but now the division into western and eastern empires became
permanent. The fates of the two halves were to be very different. The western empire collapsed
while, in one of the most remarkable survival stories in world history, the Romans, as the Greeks
now called themselves, sustained the Byzantine empire until it was finally overthrown by the Ottoman
Turks in 1453. They did this despite blow after blow from their surrounding enemies, including the
Persians and the forces of Islam which overran much of the southern half of the empire in the seventh
century. The Byzantine empire used to be seen as stagnant and exotic, introspective and consumed by
court intrigues, but its capacity to adapt its administration and defence towards new threats was
extraordinary.1
So far as the eastern church was concerned, however, Theodosius coup of the 380s had left many
issues unresolved. The boundaries between orthodoxy and heresy had only been tentatively defined
and it was impossible to find a way of clarifying them. The Arians survived in Constantinople and
in one riot had even burned down the church of Santa Sophia. Paganism had been confronted in the
390s but could not easily be eradicated, especially in the rural areas where it showed a tenacity
rooted in centuries of custom. Assaults on paganism also meant challenging the major philosophies
and education system that between them had upheld and fostered rational debate and high-quality
rhetoric for centuries. Within the Nicene church itself, the new supremacy of the bishop of
Constantinople, second only to Rome, had caused enormous resentment in Alexandria. It was still
uncertain whether the emperors were ready to use their power and influence to impose religious
uniformity as Theodosius I had done.
However, Arcadius showed none of the resilience and political intelligence of his father.
Nectarius had been a shrewd appointment as bishop of Constantinople in 381 and remained in his
post until 397. His successor, John Chrysostom, the Golden-mouthed preacher of Antioch, on the
other hand, was the choice of the imperial eunuch Eutropius. John was prickly in temperament,
hopelessly antisocial and reckless in asserting his authority. While he denounced the rich for their
profligacy, he believed that a bishop should enjoy precedence, even in the imperial palace. At first
Eudoxia, the pious wife of Arcadius, welcomed him for his asceticism, but she and the other members
of the Constantinople elite were soon unsettled by his outspoken attacks on their finery. Only the poor,
who relished Johns vivid attacks on the extravagance of the rich, supported him but such a volatile
group was to prove impossible to control.
As Johns popularity waned, it was inevitable that Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, a city still
smarting from the elevation of Constantinople in 381, would watch for an opportunity to discredit
him. At first things did not look hopeful for Theophilus. His destruction of the Serapeion in 391 had
unsettled the emperors. He had now decided to join the campaign against Origen and he exiled a
group of Origenist monks. These, led by four Tall or Long Brothers, as they became known, arrived in
Constantinople to complain of their treatment. Eudoxia and Arcadius demanded that Theophilus come
to Constantinople to explain himself and John was ordered by the court to preside at the interrogation.
A confrontation between the bishops, one technically superior to the other who did not recognise his
status, seemed inevitable.
Theophilus could hardly defy the imperial summons but he took the longest route possible to the
capital, overland through Palestine, Syria and Asia Minor, canvassing for support among other
bishops as he did so. His retinue arrived in Constantinople a year after the summons with a mass of
hangers-on, including bishops from Asia whom John had deposed for corruption. Once they had
settled outside the city, they began gathering grievances against John who did nothing to help himself
by refusing to preside over the coming tribunal. In desperation the court abandoned him, and
Theophilus, with the support of Eudoxia, arrogantly pronounced his deposition. In June 404 John left
Constantinople. He returned briefly but died in exile in 407.2
Johns unhappy experience shows that the relationship between church and the emperors was still
undefined. It depended on the personalities involved and the degree to which they were prepared to
manoeuvre, with or without scruples, to achieve their ends. In theory, the court held all the coercive
power and could use it, as Theodosius had done, to impose its will on the church. In practice, the
weakness of Arcadius, the impulsiveness of Eudoxia and Johns self-created isolation, had allowed
Theophilus to snatch a temporary victory from what appeared to be a hopelessly weak position.
There were to be longterm repercussions. Theophilus included his nephew, Cyril in his retinue, and
when Theophilus died in 412, Cyril, as has been seen, came triumphantly and violently into his own.
He had no inhibitions about confronting a bishop of Constantinople as ruthlessly as his uncle had
done.
Arcadius died in 408. His son, Theodosius II, who survived until 450, achieving the longest rule
of any emperor, saw it as his duty to defend orthodoxy. This was not easy. The boundaries were never
clear. One of Theodosius laws, of 428, listed over twenty heretical sects, including Arians,
Macedonians and Manicheists. Furthermore, the wealth of the church was such that rival groups
would taunt each other with accusations of heresy in the hope of dislodging their opponents. Heresy
and orthodoxy became very flexible concepts. One unfortunate bishop of Synnada (in Phrygia)
travelled to Constantinople to complain of heretics in his diocese only for these to declare that they
were now orthodox and justified in seizing control of the diocese in his absence. They were never
expelled.
Pagans continued to be targeted. In 435 orders were given for all pagan shrines still standing to be
destroyed and three years later Theodosius commanded the praetorian prefect of the east to exercise
watchfulness over the pagans and their heathen enormities as despite a thousand terrors of the laws
they continued to sin with audacious madness. In the same year, 438, a law deprived Jews of all
honours and dignities and banned them from any administrative role, even those involving the
defence of a city.3
These laws were comparatively ineffective. Synagogues continued to be built and paganism was
still strong in the countryside well into the sixth century. The most important reason for the lack of
imperial success was a fresh debate which consumed the energies and ambitions of the leading
bishops. One result of the elevation of Jesus into the Godhead was to leave it unclear how his
humanity, as described in the gospels, could be related to his new divine status. The Nicene creed
simply stated that he became a man but provided no further enlightenment. How had he shown his
continuing divinity while on earth? One might suggest his miracles, the special nature of his teachings,
the inability to sin and the resurrection, yet what room did this leave for his humanity? Did he switch
from being divine to human at will or did two natures co-exist at all times? Did Jesus have emotions
or did he transcend them? Were they real emotions or only designed to ensure effective contact with
his followers? Could he suffer pain? If he could, then was he really a god? If not, what was the point
of the crucifixion?
No two theologians were likely to agree on a single precise formula to describe the relationship
between the two natures and so the issue became caught up in the existing rivalry between
Constantinople and Alexandria. In 428 a new bishop of Constantinople, Nestorius, had taken office.
Like John Chrysostom he was socially clumsy, offending Pulcheria, the emperors pious elder sister,
by refusing to allow her to come up to communion with the emperor and pointing out an apparent
contradiction between her assertive presence in public life and her professed virginity. He annoyed
others by vigorously asserting his authority over the eastern church. On the issue of Jesus humanity,
he followed the tradition of Antioch, which taught that as Mary was fully human, she could not have
given birth to someone who was fully God. Jesus must be accorded a human nature of some sort
although it was unclear how this related to his undoubted divinity.
This view was now threatened by the increasing veneration shown for the Virgin Mary. A new title
for her had been proposed, perhaps as early as Origen, that of Mary as Theotokos, the bearer of
God. The title did not offend Nicaea but it assumed that the primary nature of Jesus was divine.
Naturally, the supporters of Theotokos accepted that Jesus had some human elements but placed these
somewhere within a single divine nature. This approach was more popular in Alexandria. When
Nestorius unwisely preached his own views, which included the title of bearer of Christ, rather than
bearer of God, for Mary, Cyril, now bishop of Alexandria, saw his chance to challenge him. Cyril
accused Nestorius of asserting that Christ had two natures, and issued a list of Twelve Anathemas,
his own version of Nestorius apparent heresies, including the denial of Mary as Theotokos, which
he called on Nestorius to renounce. He then sent a distorted version of Nestorius views to the bishop
of Rome, Celestine, who was only too happy to join in a campaign against a bishop of
Constantinople.
The concept of a single or a divided nature of Christ was a purely artificial one. It could never be
related to any text from the gospels although it could perhaps be argued that the synoptics favoured the
Nestorian position and the gospel of John the Alexandrian. This, of course, helped no one as it was
impossible to propose that one gospel contained more theological truth than another. It was an issue
that could be recognised as insoluble or, if the debate became too fractious, as one to be settled by
imperial decree. Theodosius failed to appreciate this. As a result the church was torn apart by bitter
argument for the next twenty years and when Theodosius successor Marcion did finally intervene to
impose a solution it led to a major split within eastern Christianity.
The first attempt to settle the issue was a stage-managed council in Ephesus that Cyril persuaded
Theodosius to endorse. It met in July 431. It was an astute choice of venue because of the legend that
Mary had come here with the apostle John after the crucifixion and here as much as anywhere she was
venerated as Theotokos. There was no easier way of isolating Nestorius and when he arrived from
Constantinople, he was barred from the council where Cyril and his followers declared him a Judas.
His supporters were outraged. Theodosius realised he had lost the initiative and vainly tried to
excommunicate the major participants on both sides of the controversy.
Cyril knew how to respond. He scoured Egypt for gifts, and an impressive array of gold coins and
exotic items including ostrich eggs was shipped from Alexandria to Constantinople for distribution
around the court in the hope of winning the emperors support. It had some effect. Theodosius
understood that it would be impossible for Nestorius to remain as bishop of Constantinople and he
was sent off to a monastery in Antioch. Before he went he announced that he would accept Theotokos
so long as the term could be interpreted in a way he could support. Officially he had escaped the
stigma of heresy. Cyril was allowed to retain his bishopric.
Cyril also showed that he was ready to compromise. Secure now that his rival in Constantinople
had been deposed, he accepted a formula which retained Theotokos but which talked of two natures
in union, Christ as both perfect god and perfect man with the latter one in substance with the rest of
humanity.4 This satisfied no one. Many of Cyrils supporters felt that any talk of a two-nature Christ
was a concession to Nestorius and a declaration by Theodosius in 435 that Nestorius was indeed a
heretic was not enough to calm them. When Cyril died in 444, he was succeeded as bishop of
Alexandria by Dioscorus, a hardliner who wanted to discard Cyrils compromise and return to a one
(divine) nature formula. Dioscorus launched his own assault on the new bishop of Constantinople,
Flavian, and once again Theodosius was induced to summon a council to Ephesus.
The triumphant Dioscorus called on Leo I, bishop of Rome, 44061, to support him by coming to
Ephesus. It was to his credit that Leo avoided getting drawn into the political and theological
quagmire and he refused. Leo was not a creative theologian but he had a clear and vigorous mind and
saw his chance to draw up a statement of what he understood was western belief on the matter of
Christs humanity. To the horror of Dioscorus, it was not far from that of Nestorius. Leos Tome (the
term for an official papal letter) set out a Christ in whom divine and human natures co-exist. Each has
its own sphere of activity but these operate without becoming separate. He who is true God is also
true man: and in this union there is no lie, since the humility of manhood and the loftiness of the
Godhead both meet there. For as God is not changed by the showing of pity, so man is not swallowed
up by the dignity. For each form does what is proper to it with the co-operation of the other; that is the
Word performing what appertains to the Word, and the flesh carrying out what appertains to the flesh.
One of them sparkles with miracles, the other succumbs to injuries. This description it can hardly
be called more than that of two natures had the virtue of clarity.
The Council of Ephesus of 449 was a nasty affair. Dioscorus set it up to achieve his own end, the
condemnation of Flavian. He would not even allow Leos Tome, which Flavian was happy to support,
to be read. He proposed the council endorse what appeared to be an uncontentious reaffirmation of
Nicaea. Once this had been agreed he announced that Flavian had violated the creed and must be
deposed. The doors of the church were flung open and a gang of heavyweights poured in. Dioscorus
announced that all must sign the decree excommunicating Flavian, who had taken refuge in the
sanctuary. Blank pieces of paper were provided for signatures. Flavian was so badly beaten that he
died soon afterwards. In Rome, Leo denounced this robber council to the emperor. Theodosius,
once again outmanoeuvred, meekly told Leo that peace reigned and pure truth was supreme. A new
bishop of Constantinople, a protg of Dioscorus, was eased into place. It was one of the last acts of
Theodosius life. Out hunting in July 450, he fell from his horse and died.
So here was a dispute that had been festering for twenty years but was still no closer to resolution.
The impossibility of finding a coherent theological statement was now obvious. Even if a council had
met in peace to discuss the matter, wrangling and rivalry would have disrupted it. The failure lay with
Theodosius. The full range of his legislation on religion is preserved in a separate section in the
famous Theodosian Law Code of 438 and it can be seen that many of his laws appear to be responses
to crises rather than part of a defined strategy. He should either have left the church to sort the matter
out and concentrated on his political duties or imposed a solution. While claiming that he wished to
gain the goodwill of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by maintaining orthodoxy, his inconsistency
had simply allowed the bullyboys such as Cyril and Dioscorus to gain the upper hand.
There was then a remarkable development. Pulcheria emerged from the shadows and promptly
took as her consort one Marcian, a soldier whom she elevated as emperor beside her. She was a
supporter of Flavian and Leo and loathed Dioscorus. The remains of Flavian were welcomed back
for burial in Constantinople. Pulcherias niece, Galla Placidia, wife of the western emperor
Valentinian III, wrote to her from Rome telling her to subvert the wretched Council of Ephesus and
to respect the primacy of Leo. Order was to be restored. A new council was to be summoned and this
time it was to be within imperial reach, in Chalcedon, just across the Bosporus from the capital.5
No one could call the Council of Chalcedon of 451 harmonious. Sessions were often rowdy, rivals
taunting each other with accusations of heresy. However, under the guidance of imperial
commissioners whose names head the official accounts, some order was given to the proceedings.
The Acts of the Council of 449 were read out and most of the bishops were ashamed at what they had
consented to. Dioscorus blustered in his defence but he was eventually condemned and deprived of
his see. His senior supporters were pardoned so long as they supported his condemnation and
assented to the Tome of Leo which was now becoming the talisman of orthodoxy.
Then a new formula began to be put together. No one dared to mention Nestorius name. Although
he was alive, he was officially a heretic. Cyrils theology still had support and, while his Twelve
Anathemas were rejected as too extreme, some of his earlier writings against Nestorius were more
acceptable. It was decided that Theotokos would be part of any agreed formula. Leos Tome was
welcomed and a declaration that Flavian had made of his views to the emperor was included among
favoured documents. The bishops did begin to put these together but this time they had to contend with
highly trained members of the imperial staff. These rejected one formula as too close to the beliefs of
the condemned Dioscorus and then set up a small committee of bishops that they could supervise.
Marcian met protests at the imposition of his authority by threatening to close down the council and
transfer it to Rome! On 25 October 451, the emperor, accompanied by Pulcheria, crossed the
Bosporus. Acclaimed as the new Constantine, he presided over the session that affirmed a new
Definition of Faith.
While much of the final wording of the Definition of Faith came from Cyrils works, it was the
Tome of Leo that provided the most significant phrases. Christ was declared to be at once complete
in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man. He was begotten of the Father as of
his Godhead but born of the Virgin Mary, who was given the title of Theotokos. Within this one
person, Christ had two [ sic] natures without confusion, without change, without division, without
separation; the distinction of natures being in no way abolished because of the union, but rather the
characteristic property of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and
subsistence. The extreme Alexandrian position that Jesus had only one incarnate nature was thus
rejected. Ironically, the final definition was not, apart from the Theotokos, far from what Nestorius
himself had preached! In fact, in his exile, he produced a text, only rediscovered in 1895, known as
the Bazaar of Heracleides. Written before the Council of Chalcedon, it includes phrases such as the
same one is twofold that were very similar to those of Chalcedon.
Marcian had imposed his will on the church. He was not to miss his chance of improving church
discipline and he now insisted that the bishops condemned abuses such as the sale of bishoprics. With
the bishop of Alexandria deposed and the bishop of Rome not present, other than in the person of
legates, the powers of the bishop of Constantinople, the emperors own bishop, could also be
strengthened. Henceforth the bishop would be able to hear appeals against the decisions of the
metropolitan bishops, including Antioch and Alexandria. He would be directly responsible for all the
bishops of Thrace, the province of Asia and Pontus, as well as any bishop outside the borders of the
eastern empire. While Constantinople remained second in place in honour to Rome, within the eastern
empire it was to enjoy identical privileges to those of Rome in the west. The papal legates were
furious but were easily overruled. Other canons dealt with the monks. As they were in effect self-
appointed and not officially clerics or subject to bishops, their unruly behaviour had to be contained.
Now all monks had to be subject to a bishop and were bound to celibacy. Marcian signed off the
council. All therefore shall be bound to hold the decisions of the sacred Council of Chalcedon and
indulge no further doubts. Take heed therefore to this edict of our Serenity: abstain from profane
words and cease all further discussion of religion [ sic]. Marcian even ordered his soldiers to take
an oath of allegiance to the Chalcedonian decisions.
The declaration of Chalcedon was in fact a ritualistic formula. It was a statement of what was to
be believed and did not actually explain anything. While contemporaries talked of Christs human
nature being expressed when he wept over the body of Lazarus and his divine nature expressed when
he raised him from the dead, one could not go back to the gospels and apply the formula in any
coherent way to other events in his life. There is no mention of a union of natures in the New
Testament. While the word used for person, the Greek prosopon, is found in the New Testament it is
not in the sense used at Chalcedon. It was completely unclear how these natures, in any of the ways
they were expressed, actually related to the historical Jesus of the gospels. This was not the issue.
No formula would have satisfied everyone. The crucial point was that once again it had been shown
that only an emperor, with all the coercive force he had at his command, could define doctrine. He
had, however, to be determined to assert this role. Marcian had behaved resolutely where Theodosius
had faltered.
 CHAPTER THIRTY
The Closing of the Schools
DESPITE THE INTERVENTION OF MARCIAN, THE COUNCIL OF Chalcedon did not bring peace to the church.
In Alexandria the mere mention of the phrase two natures set off rioting by the monks and anger
among traditionalists. The inclusion of extracts from Cyrils works in the Chalcedonian formula was
not enough to calm them. They dug out phrases from the Tome, such as the Word performing what
appertains to the Word, and the flesh carrying out what appertains to the flesh, which, they claimed,
could only refer to two natures and thus to heretical Nestorianism. They were so furious with the
betrayal of Chalcedon that they consolidated their own belief in the single nature of the divine logos,
made flesh in the person of Jesus, monophysitism as it became known. Monophysitism spread from
Egypt to Armenia and even into Ethiopia. To this day, Dioscorus remains honoured in Coptic
Christian churches in Egypt. Of Egyptian Christians, 95 per cent are members of the Coptic Church,
which claims to have maintained the true teaching of the nature of Christ against the heresy instituted
by Chalcedon.
At the same time Nestorius was not forgotten. His followers remained strong in Syria and
Nestorianism spread eastwards, across the border into Persia. The Nestorians views were often
expressed in Syriac, adding another dimension of complexity to the whole debate. Nestorian
missionaries proved enormously energetic and spread the gospel as far as India and China. No other
branch of Christianity covered as wide an expanse as that of the Nestorians until the sixteenth century
when the Spanish and Portuguese created their Christian empires in the Americas.
Despite Marcians initiative and effective handling of his fractious Christian subjects, the result
was a church which had become fragmented into three branches. Even so, the emperor had reasserted
himself as the focal point for the Chalcedonian church. When Marcian died in 457 (Pulcheria had
predeceased him in 453), the bishop of Constantinople, the patriarch as he was now known, presided
for the first time over the coronation of an emperor. An acclamation from the congregation called on
God to accept the new emperor Leo and linked his rule directly with that of Christ. It was a ritual
which became inseparable from the rule of the Byzantine emperors and was even used by the Doges
in Venice at their coronations in St Marks.
Certainly, seventy years later (527), when one of the last great figures of antiquity, Justinian, took
the imperial office he personified the role of emperor as the chosen of God. His determination to
restore supremacy and unity to the church was paramount. His Law Codes, a triumph of consolidation
of existing Roman law, were issued in the names of the emperor and the Lord Jesus Christ. He put in
hand legislation to restrict citizenship to orthodox Christians alone. While the closing of Platos
Academy in Athens in 529 is the symbol of Justinians shutting down of pagan philosophy, it was the
laws that immediately followed that enforced the ban on pagan worship. One law, of about 531,
exhorted all pagans to come forward for baptism, prohibited them from teaching and ordered that
their children should be forcibly instructed in Christianity. Parrhesia, the freedom to teach others or
be consulted on public matters without risk of condemnation, which pagan philosophers had
traditionally enjoyed, was withdrawn. The last functioning Egyptian temple, that on the island of
Philae dedicated to Isis, had been closed down in 526. Of course, one could not suppress paganism. It
lingered as superstitions in the countryside. As late as the Quinisext Council of 692, the church was
attempting to ban public dances, invocations to Dionysus and the lighting of fires to the new moon.
Yet this was the moment when Christianity became compulsory for all subjects of the eastern empire.
 Nor was Justinian slow to enforce orthodoxy. It was now over fifty years since the last emperor of
the west, Romulus Augustulus, had abdicated, but the eastern emperors had never abandoned their
claim to rule the whole of the former empire. Justinian was particularly incensed that the barbarian
successor states in the west were Arian. The barbarians had faithfully retained their belief in a
subordinationist Christ ever since their conversion by Ulfilas. In North Africa, Arian Christianity had
been imposed on the population as early as 429 when a determined group of Goths, the Vandals, led
by their inspiring leader Gaiseric, overran the African provinces. The relationship between
orthodox Catholics, the remaining Donatists and the ruling Arians had not been stable over the
following century. Gaiseric was intent on eradicating Catholic Christianity from the Vandal heartland,
the African province of Proconsularis of which Carthage was the capital, even if persecution, often
intense, alternated with periods of tolerance. The fate of the Catholics haunted the conscience of
Justinian and he claimed that a vision of a martyred bishop inspired him to re-conquer North Africa.
The campaign of 533 was cleverly planned. A revolt was provoked in another Vandal enclave,
Sardinia. Vandal forces rushed to put it down, allowing Justinians general Belisarius to land in the
bay of Tunis on the mainland of Africa and quickly defeat the remaining Vandal troops. The Vandal
elite simply disintegrated. The Africans now found themselves under a Greek-speaking administration
that represented the Christianity of Constantinople, not Rome. Archaeology shows that Justinian
embarked on a major programme of church building but Byzantine rule only survived until the next
wave of invaders, the Muslims, swept along the North African coast in the seventh century.
Buoyed up by his initial success, Justinian now turned to Italy. Following the collapse of the
empire, the Ostrogothic leader Theodoric had established his own kingdom based at Ravenna in 493.
The kingdom extended from Italy into southern France and over the Visigoths in Spain and, although
Arian in belief, was tolerant to the mass of its Catholic subjects. The Arians worshipped in Gothic
but in many ways the two Christianities were hard to distinguish. While the Arians proclaimed,
Glory be to the Father through the Son in the Holy Ghost, the Catholic version was Glory be to the
Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. In the east such things mattered; there is not much evidence
that they did in western Europe.
In Ravenna itself, it is virtually impossible to distinguish between Arian and Catholic churches.
The palace church of Theodoric was Sant Apollinare Nuovo, where the Ostrogothic leader
commissioned the dazzling mosaics of Christs miracles, his Passion and resurrection, the first-known
cycle of these which survive. The sumptuous Codex Argenteus, a silver bible the lettering being in
silver and gold is a Gothic text of the gospels probably commissioned by Theodoric himself. When
Theodoric visited Rome in 500, Pope Symmachus and all the senate and people of Rome came
joyfully to meet him outside the city. One can hardly imagine how Ambrose or Athanasius would
have reacted to this welcome of a heretic. Although he himself was of the Arian sect, one chronicle
records, Theodoric nevertheless attempted nothing against the Catholics, so that by the Romans he
was hailed as another Trajan or Valentinian.1 There is evidence that he restored some of the decaying
buildings of Rome.
So Justinian did not need to rescue oppressed Catholics from a harsh heretical elite. Nevertheless,
the temptation of another easy victory, this time to recover the ancient core of the Roman empire, was
too great. Justinian and Belisarius misjudged the campaign badly. The mountainous terrain of Italy has
always been difficult to fight in, the Ostrogoths proved resilient and the local population was
ambivalent about being rescued by a Greek-speaking emperor. The war dragged on for twenty years
and it saw the final collapse of the Roman administration, including the extinction of the last of the
senatorial families and the cutting of the aqueducts that had served Rome so well for centuries. In the
event, the Romans of the east were among the most effective destroyers of the empire of the west.
Victory, when it came in 554, was limited to control of the shell of Rome, Ravenna, a fragile corridor
between them and a scattering of fortresses and cities. In Ravenna, the victorious Catholics
obliterated evidence of Theodoric in the mosaics of Sant Apollinare but otherwise preserved the
church. In the astonishing church of San Vitale, begun by the Arian Ostrogoths but completed by the
Byzantines, triumphant mosaics show Justinian and his empress, Theodora, whom he had raised from
a dubious past as a circus artiste, first as his mistress, then his wife. The mosaics mask a hollow
victory, made even emptier when the Lombards exploited the breakdown to invade Italy from the
north and establish their own kingdom there.
The final design of San Vitale may echo Justinians audience chamber in Constantinople. The
emperors supreme architectural achievement, the church of Santa Sophia, was closer to home. The
original church of this name, founded by Constantine, had been destroyed in riots of 532 that had
come close to overthrowing Justinian. (The resolute Theodora persuaded her husband to massacre the
insurgents.) The new Santa Sophia, completed, after its first dome collapsed, in 563, is one of the
finest buildings from antiquity, equalled only perhaps by the Parthenon in Athens and the Pantheon in
Rome. Its centrepiece is a great dome rising from four massive piers with two huge semi-domes on
the eastern and western sides. The whole was originally sumptuously decorated with mosaics and
marble. The dome, wrote one contemporary, the historian Procopius, appears as if suspended from
heaven. A thousand lamps lit the interior its glow, wrote another contemporary, Paul the Silentiary,
showed the returning seafarer not only his passage home but the way to the living God.
Justinian was equally determined to restore Christian unity in his kingdom where the split between
his own Christianity and the Nestorian and Monophysite alternatives remained. When a devastating
plague swept through the empire in the 540s, even infecting Justinian, he took it as Gods judgement
for his failure to heal the wounds of division. More pragmatically, he desperately needed to regain the
allegiance of the provinces of Egypt and Syria and he decided that the priority was to bring the
Monophysites back into the church. His way of doing this was clumsy. He hoped to impress the
Monophysites by condemning the apparent Nestorian sympathies of three earlier theologians,
Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Ibas of Edessa who had always been seen as
orthodox. Their works were condemned under the name of The Three Chapters, specific writings of
each of the three.
When Vigilius, the bishop of Rome, was summoned to Constantinople to give the condemnation an
ecumenical dimension, it was in the face of immense opposition from the western bishops who
deplored the posthumous excommunication of the three theologians. Vigilius managed to avoid
attending the council that Justinian held in his capital in 553 and the Three Chapters were condemned
in his absence. Vigilius put himself in a hopeless position by succumbing to pressure from Justinian
and agreeing that he did support the condemnation! This damned him back in Rome and when he died
in Sicily on his way home his body was refused burial in St Peters.
Unity was no easier to achieve in the east. Over a hundred years after Chalcedon, it was by now
far too late to win back the Monophysites. Their leaders had given up any hope of converting the
empire back to their own one nature formula and had established themselves as fully independent
churches with boundaries that stretched beyond the empire. Yet there were some important
consequences of the council of 553. It established the standards by which orthodoxy was to be
judged. Allegiance was pledged to the things we have received from Holy Scripture and from the
teachings of the Holy Fathers and from the definitions of one and the same faith by four sacred
councils.
This did not, of course provide any kind of stable basis for theology. How could one reconcile the
very different contributions by these three sources of orthodoxy to establish any tenable theological
conclusion? The best that could be hoped for was that any established dogma could be proved by
calling on one or the other source for support. It was the shift from scripture to the teachings of the
Holy Fathers that was most significant for the future of eastern theology. The scriptures were
allocated a diminished place alongside the church fathers and the councils. It was now that
Athanasius was enshrined as the beacon of orthodoxy and it was he who was credited with the
declaration of Mary as Theotokos. At the same council of 553, Origen was condemned as a heretic,
probably from a distorted version of his writings. Christian history was being rewritten to fit with the
Nicene and Chalcedonian formulas and the words church father now became synonymous with
orthodoxy. The often fallible and brawling bishops of history had become the sainted and infallible
authorities for a monolithic, unchanging Christian tradition as one commentator puts it.2
What did this mean for pagan philosophy? The Athenian philosophers who had been banned in 529
made for exile in Persia where the atmosphere was more tolerant. One of them, Simplicius, wrote
some of the most penetrating commentaries that exist on Aristotle while he was there but after the first
burst of energy the exiles fade entirely from history. In the increasingly Christianised empire, the
philosophical mind turned to criticising the more empirical of the classical philosophers such as
Aristotle. In the hands of John Philoponus, the lover of toil, of Alexandria (c. 490570), this was a
sophisticated attack. Philoponus noted the contradictions in Aristotles works and the weaknesses of
his arguments for the eternity of the world (arguments which any orthodox Christian had to confront).
He went further to challenge Aristotles explanation of dynamic processes, putting forward his own
theories of impetus. He used these to explain how God sent the heavenly bodies into their paths at the
moment of creation.
Philoponus works went into abeyance after he was declared a heretic a hundred years after his
death for an analysis of the Trinity that implied that there were three gods within the Godhead.
However, when Aristotles philosophy had become entrenched orthodoxy in the Middle Ages, his
critiques were rediscovered and provided ammunition for the Renaissance counterattack on
Aristotelian scholasticism. Philoponus critical thinking existed uneasily within Christian belief but
he showed that even some scientific advance might be made so long as it did not challenge the
authority of the church or any of the major articles of faith. These were regarded as unassailable and
Philoponus own condemnation makes the point.
The other trend in sixth-century Christian philosophy was towards mysticism, notably in the works
of Pseudo-Dionysius (see p.321 below). Here, the surrender to contemplation meant that the heart had
been taken out of the ancient tradition of reasoned empirical thought. There was a major decline in the
copying of ancient authors. The rubbish dumps in Egypt have provided us with a reliable century-by-
century record of what was being copied. The number of classical authors reproduced drops off after
300 and no more than twenty papyri which cite the Greek classics are known for the entire reign of
Justinian.
While in the west in the thirteenth century the classicist Petrarch bemoaned the dark age which
had fallen on Europe, he is echoed by the twelfth-century Byzantine chronicler John Zonaras, who
accused Justinian of being responsible for a new level of boorishness as a result of his closing of
the schools. The sixth century writes one modern scholar, is a period in which the philosophical
glory that was Greece was wearing thin. Philosophers, and especially pagan ones, are rare birds
indeed, flocking together for shelter and survival in various parts of the empire.3
In 787, a seventh ecumenical council met at Nicaea. Its proceedings have been described as long
and verbose, at an intellectual level far below preceding councils with the primary business being
the restoration of icons as worthy of reverence (after a campaign against the depiction of sacred
images had led to the mass destruction of many of them).4 It was at this council that the bishops of the
east closed down their church to further change. They accepted the decrees of the six earlier
ecumenical councils and then announced: To make our confessions short, we keep unchanged all the
ecclesiastical traditions handed down to us, whether in writing or verbally.
By now book learning, and certainly original composition, were rare. Nothing is known of any
Christian schools in the Byzantine world in this period. It was left to a group of civil servants to copy
out some of the great works of Greek literature that still survived in earlier manuscripts. The histories
of Herodotus and Thucydides and a few plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles are known only because of
the dedication of these secular scholars.5 By the tenth century, it is estimated that there were no more
than three hundred scholars receiving a higher education in Constantinople in any given year. The
Orthodox churches of the east continued to provide mystery and a theological underpinning to the
regime but the tradition of debate lay dead under the mantle of ritual and ceremony.
 CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
A Fragile Church
CHRISTIANITY AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE

THE EAST SAW THE GREATEST DESTRUCTION OF PAGAN SHRINES, BUT their obliteration was also common
in the west. Martin of Tours, one of the most popular bishop-saints of the late fourth century, was
renowned for miracles which caused the collapse or burning of a shrine. There is a dramatic falling
off of pagan activity in the archaeological record after the fourth century and the written sources of the
time give us triumphant accounts of the breaking up of pagan statues. In the later Ecclesiastical
History of the English People, the Venerable Bede describes with approval the massacre of a group
of heretical Welsh priests because they had despised the offer of everlasting salvation through their
obstinancy.
Much of this was sheer vandalism or the exploits of a local holy man trying to improve his status
as a committed Christian. It was Augustine who elaborated a more sophisticated ideology which
condoned the persecution of pagans and heretics. His thinking developed slowly as a result of his
experiences with the Donatists, the majority Christian church in North Africa and ardent rivals of
Augustines Catholicism.1
The Donatists had adopted the Nicene Trinity and so could hardly be called heretics. They
regarded themselves as the true church in that they had kept the purity of their faith isolated from the
Catholic church which, ever since the reign of Constantine, they had seen as rooted in compromise,
too sympathetic to the lapsed and seduced by the wealth on offer from the emperors. Any
confrontation by the state simply reinforced their identity as the church of the martyrs and they were
happy to throw back Jesus words from the Sermon on the Mount, Blessed are they who are
persecuted for righteousness sake, at their opponents.
In the early fifth century, the state authorities began to move against the Donatists. Quite apart from
the challenge they presented to what was now a state church, their more fanatical members were
engaging in violent campaigns in the countryside and had to be confronted for reasons of good order.
The emperor Honorius knew that they would not be eradicated easily and he approached the problem
through a stage-managed council of some six hundred Catholic and Donatists bishops meeting in
Carthage in 411. If there was a core theological issue, it was whether a Christian community should
be essentially an assembly of saints, those who had remained pure, as the Donatists argued, or a more
worldly body made up of saints and sinners alike. Augustine attended and his voice gradually became
more dominant. He quoted Matthew on the gathering of fish, with the worthless being thrown away
only at the end of time (13: 4750). One could never distinguish who would be saved, even from
among the faithful members of the church, argued Augustine, so it was impossible to select an elite on
merit. Nor could the Donatists claim that the Catholics were so unworthy that any Catholic converting
to Donatism had to be baptised anew. (Here the Donatists followed the teaching of Cyprian, the
martyrbishop of Carthage, whom they deeply revered.) It was decreed that the sacraments of the
church existed as sacred vessels, independent of those who administered them, so that even a baptism
by the most unworthy of priests had validity. It followed that rebaptism would always be superfluous.
This view, also set out in Augustines De doctrina christiana, is still official Catholic teaching.2
The presiding civil servant had been instructed by Honorius to make sure that the Donatists were
condemned by the majority in the council. They duly were and in 412 the very act of being a Donatist
was declared a criminal offence. In these years Augustine developed a sophisticated rationale for
their persecution. He claimed, for instance, that many of the Donatist faithful had been bullied into
acquiescence by their church and that the Catholics had a duty to liberate them from their faith. He
soon went further to argue that the church had the right to save the surviving Donatists from the
perdition which would be their undoubted fate if they kept loyal to their church, and force was
justified to this end. He gave examples of where God had used force in the scriptures, especially in
achieving the conversion of Paul (by throwing him on the ground).
It is true that Augustine worried over how an individual could be sure that he was carrying out
Gods will when he persecuted others but he believed that sincere members of the church would
always act in accordance with Gods will. Here his view, that the church itself is made up of saints
and sinners and so even committed Catholics might commit sin in their persecuting zeal, became
submerged. His conclusion: What does brotherly love do? Does it, because it fears the short-lived
fires of the furnaces for the few, abandon all to the eternal fires of hell? is a chilling one, not least in
ethical terms. Does the end really justify the means? Yet, it was this rationale that was developed by
the medieval church to justify the burning of those defined as heretics.3 The Donatists eventually
vanished under the waves of invaders, Vandals, Byzantines and finally Muslims that swept through
North Africa in the next three centuries.
The medieval church would never have come into being if a hierarchy had not been established
under the primacy of the popes. There were many reasons why the bishops of Rome had found it
difficult to assert their authority in the first centuries of Christianity. Rome itself was distant from the
larger Greek-speaking Christian communities of the eastern Mediterranean. No bishop of Rome had
attended any of the ecumenical councils, so Romes status within the wider Christian world was
limited. Within the city, congregations had been founded by immigrant leaders from many different
parts of the empire and so drew on a number of different Christian traditions. It was hard for a single
bishop to secure their common allegiance, one reason why the elections, such as that of Damasus in
366, were so violent. Moreover, the scattered Christian communities were grouped around the centre
of a city whose temples were hallowed by centuries of traditional worship. The pagan senatorial
aristocracy was strong and even an emperor as devoutly Christian as Theodosius I had acquiesced in
their authority when he visited Rome in 389. It was only in the early fifth century that most of these
families converted.4 The Gothic sack of 410, in which Christian churches were spared, was perhaps
crucial in suggesting that the pagan centre of the city was no longer protected by the gods of old. A
church such as Santa Sabina, built on the Aventine Hill in the 420s, is symbolically important in that
its columns come from an earlier pagan building.
The first bishop to take advantage of the possibilities of effective Christian leadership of the city
was Leo I (ruled 44061). Leo developed his authority on the basis that he was as much the legal as
the spiritual heir of Peter and he exerted himself with total confidence through a series of decrees on
church government and the status of bishops. He achieved a further condemnation of Pelagius by the
Italian bishops. Faced with the high-handed conduct of Hilary, bishop of Arles, who behaved as if he
had primacy in Gaul, Leo sought a decree from the emperor through which to reassert his own
primacy. There is a legend that Leo, abetted by an apparition of Peter and Paul, forced Attila and the
Huns to withdraw from northern Italy. (There were good strategic reasons for the withdrawal and one
does not need to invoke the miraculous but the story is an indication of how Leos reputation
prospered.) When he needed to intervene in civilian affairs, he carefully did so as if he were the
representative of the emperor. His sermons and writings were in simple direct Latin, a contrast with
the more rhetorical and complex language that aristocrats tended to use, and he can be credited with
ensuring that there were Latin rites that could be used in the church outside Rome.
Leo had been furious when he heard of the confirmation of Constantinoples elevated status after
the Council of Chalcedon. It was an affront to the primacy of Rome. Christ had given authority to
Peter, Peter had passed it to the apostles and every bishop, east, west or elsewhere, derived theirs
from the apostles. Thus the new status of Constantinople, which had no apostolic heritage, could not
be accepted. It took some diplomatic manoeuvring before the emperor Marcian could persuade Leo to
split the Definition of Faith off from the subsequent canons and accept the former.
Yet it was Leo who benefited from the compromise. It was the very first time that the bishop of
Rome had played an important part in the making of Christian theology. Leo could never hope to have
much influence over the Greek-speaking church, whose major bishoprics were well beyond the reach
of the Latin church in Rome, but this meant he could call the Chalcedonian formula his own without
much chance of rebuttal. The orthodoxy of Chalcedon now went hand in hand with the rise of papal
supremacy. So long as the authority of the pope was paramount there was no need to provide any
further theological justification for the Definition and it has been accepted by the western churches to
this day.
It is really from now that one can talk of popes and the papacy. (Papa, father, had been used
widely in the church but was gradually to be used exclusively of the bishop of Rome.) Yet no pope
could exert effective authority in an empire that was in the last stages of collapse. The formal end of
the western empire came in 476 when the young emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed, although
some order was maintained by the Ostrogothic leader Theodoric. Under Theodoric, for instance,
intellectual life continued through the works of Roman civil servants such as Boethius and
Cassiodorus.5
It was the campaign against the Ostrogoths by the Byzantine general Belisarius that brought the
greatest destruction to Italy. Looking back from the end of the sixth century, Gregory the Great
lamented the collapse of civilisation. Towns are depopulated, fortified places destroyed, churches
burnt, monasteries and nunneries ravaged Rome itself is disintegrating, the senate is gone, the
people perish, pain and fear grow daily for the few who are left In his The Fall of Rome and the
End of Civilization, Bryan Ward-Perkins details the archaeological evidence for the total collapse of
what had been a relatively prosperous economy. In many areas living standards in the west now fell
below those of pre-Roman societies and Roman levels of industrial activity may not have been
regained before the sixteenth century. The survivors shrank back to defensible sites.
This is the background to Gregorys reign as pope (590604). Gregory was the son of a Roman
senator but he had been drawn to monasticism and had sold his extensive properties and diverted the
proceeds to the poor. He was sent to Constantinople to serve as the emissary of the pope in the
eastern capital but his heart always remained in Rome and he avoided the fate of the unhappy Vigilius
by refusing to get entangled in the disputes that gripped the eastern church. Back in Rome, he was a
natural, if reluctant candidate for the papacy when it fell vacant in 590.
Gregory was haunted by the experience of living in the last times. Even if the Byzantines had
eventually conquered parts of Italy, the Lombards had taken advantage of the collapse of the
Ostrogoths to assume control over most of northern Italy. The popes accused the Lombards of being
Arians although it has proved very difficult to define their Christianity with any clarity. Catholic
bishops certainly survived in northern Italy but they had a much lower status than their colleagues in
France, as it was now becoming under the Franks, and the Iberian Peninsula. In all Gregory had very
little effective power, even though he did manage to launch a mission to England, which resulted in
the foundation of the English church at Canterbury, then the capital of the kingdom of Kent.
Despite his restricted influence, however, Gregory was the founder of a new Latin Christianity that
was to provide the template for the medieval church. He formulated a basis for his authority.
Reluctant to accept the legitimacy of the council of 553 he was nevertheless prepared to acknowledge
that those of Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451) were the
foundations of orthodoxy. In like manner, wrote Gregory, all the four holy synods of the holy
universal church we received as we do the four books of the Holy Gospels. This did not mean that
they were authoritative in themselves. Without the authority and consent of the apostolic see [Rome]
none of the matters transacted by a council have any binding force. Gregory had effectively
positioned the western church apart from the east as well as strengthening the rationale for papal
supremacy. Although it was to be another four hundred years before the papacy became a force in
European politics, and then as leader of a Christianity which was officially split from the east (in
1054) and with much territory lost to Islam, Gregory deserves to be seen as the founder of the
medieval papacy. His stature was enhanced by his writings on pastoral care and his insistence that his
bishops enforce their own authority with moderation. Famously, he decreed that pagan shrines should
be consecrated as churches, not destroyed, as more ardent Christians such as Martin of Tours had
demanded.
Gregory was not an original thinker and he followed Augustine in being suspicious of secular
learning, accusing the philosophers of diverting attention from God. He was a man of his times in that
he accepted that history unfolded under the auspices of God. So, looking back a hundred years to the
conversion of the Frankish king Clovis to Catholic Christianity, which was followed immediately by
a victory over his Arian rivals, Gregory declared that it was Clovis orthodoxy that had earned him
success. This was a significant shift in the presentation of the past. The classical historians did not
assume that history was moving in any particular direction but rather that it was the interplay of
different forces. It had been Eusebius who had ushered in this new genre of history, one in which God
drove events. Eusebius saw the Old Testament as a preliminary to the coming of Christ which led,
after the centuries of persecution, to the advent of Constantine and triumph of God in human affairs
(which Eusebius could then interpret with reference to Old Testament prophecies). The end time,
towards which all is tending, is the Last Judgement (and Gregory can be forgiven for believing that
the last times had indeed arrived).
There is a clear moral dimension to Eusebius approach that was endorsed by later Christian
historians. The destruction of the Temple in AD 70, for instance, is a clear indication of Gods
rejection of the Jews. God intervened, according to Theodoret, to win the battle of Frigidus for
Theodosius. If the will of a Christian God is destined to triumph, then the persecution of pagans is
justified. So Bede approves of the massacre of heretical priests who assemble unarmed against King
Aethilfrith his English settlers have become Gods instrument for the punishment of sinners. Events
have to be defined within the parameters of what it is assumed God wills. So although it was perhaps
inevitable that the tiny Arian minorities would become assimilated into the mass of Catholics, each
conversion of a ruler, whether in Spain or France, was announced as a triumph of Gods will. It is
hard to overestimate the importance of this ideology for the unfolding of medieval Christendom. It
justified the authority of the church as the instrument of Gods power and so provided an effective
cloak for its territorial and political ambitions. It was not until the fifteenth century that the recovery
of the Roman historians inspired the Renaissance humanists to write histories that were rooted once
again in secular values.6
There were other forces that sustained Christianity in the west at a time when material life was so
diminished. One heritage that bound the Christian elites together, whether they were bishops, monks
or administrators, was the use of Latin. As literacy was low even in Christian circles and few records
survive, it is difficult to delineate the ways in which Latin adapted itself to the new Europe. In Rome,
of course, it remained the language of bureaucracy. The major texts, such as those of Augustine, were
in Latin and so was the mass and the rest of the liturgy. The church could hardly communicate other
than through Latin. In Ireland, which had never been Romanised, Latin was, of course, a foreign
language but this gave it a sacred quality that was seen as appropriate for passing on the Word of
God.
There were also the monasteries. The first in the west had appeared in the early fifth century and
were as much places of refuge from the political turmoil as permanent homes of committed ascetics.
The monastery of Lerins, on an island off the coast of southern Gaul, was a stepping stone from which
aristocrats moved into bishoprics. Monasteries often grew up close to the shrines of holy men. By the
beginning of the sixth century, monks were settling into more stable institutions. In general terms,
those parts of Europe which had been most fully Romanised were ruled by bishops who embedded
themselves in the ruins of Roman cities; those free of Roman influence, such as the Irish and the
Anglo-Saxons, preferred monasteries. Rules, especially that of St Benedict (c.480 c.547), were
enormously important in defining communities that had an austere but humane regime of work, study
and prayer. Monasteries that chose to exploit their surrounding land could also have an important
economic impact in an age when living standards had fallen so dramatically. Crucially each
monastery was independent under its own abbot, reinforcing the pattern of a decentralised
Christianity.
In recent years, however, the claim that monasteries were centres for the copying of classical texts
has been challenged. The average monastic library in Anglo-Saxon England was small, perhaps fifty
books in a box, and limited to the Christian staples. The library of Bede at Jarrow, with perhaps some
two hundred books, was exceptional. Paradoxically the adoption of minuscule script in the ninth
century (in both east and west) led to the loss of much of the classical heritage as enthusiastic
copyists in the new script discarded those works they did not choose to reproduce. Across the whole
of western Europe only the Timaeus among works of Plato, the pagan philosopher whose output was
most closely attuned to Christianity, survived into the eleventh century.
There was a spiritual nexus based on a shared belief in miracles and the efficacy of holy men and
their bones to effect them. Miracles, wondrous things, had always been part of both pagan and
Christian societies but the crucial development in Christianity was a rejection of the Greek empirical
tradition by the educated elites in favour of a surrender to the miraculous. One can see this transition
in the works of Augustine. In about 390, in his True Religion, he argues that, while he does not reject
the miracles of Jesus, miracles would not have been allowed to stretch into our time, or the soul
would always be looking for sensations, and the human race would go jaded with their continual
occurrence. Miracles simply did not seem to be part of his everyday experience. Some twenty years
on, in The City of God, on the other hand, he regales his congregations with a long list of local
miracles, which includes the raising of the dead. He tells how earth and baptismal water brought to
Hippo from Jerusalem have effected a mass of cures. Gregory follows Augustine in spreading stories
of miraculous happenings. Here one can see, perhaps, a church which is institutionally weak being
forced to compromise with local spiritual forces in order to survive. What was lost for centuries was
any form of restraint on the exploitation of credulity. The exploitation of the miraculous by both
religious and secular elites acted as a major brake on intellectual progress.
The emerging rulers of the new European nations were crucial in effecting the mass conversion of
their subjects. The bishops were also important. Until the eleventh century, when the papacy began to
exert its authority over the continent, one is talking of dioceses that were largely responsible for their
own affairs. Often the bishops were capable men. Sidonius Apollinaris, a Gallic aristocrat, who had
been prefect of Rome, was living out a relatively settled life as bishop of Clermont in the 470s. He
saw his role as much that of maintaining civilised standards as of spreading Christianity but at least a
structure of authority was being preserved. Bishops were often supported by the kings or,
alternatively, in Anglo-Saxon England, for instance, kings founded and supported bishoprics.7 What
this actually meant in terms of belief and behaviour is obscure but it suggests a continual process of
compromise between a variety of spiritual forces, some probably still rooted in pagan belief, and
authorities, both church and secular. Christianity in this period jumped from one cultural and
political context to another, repeatedly mutating and reconstituting itself in ways that preserved its
core features.8

The early medieval centuries in western Europe represent a period between two Romes the Rome
of the empire and the Rome of the papacy. It was only slowly that the economy revived sufficiently to
sustain urban life and the possibilities of administrative recovery. As the papacy once more defined
itself as an institution that demanded obedience (Gregory VII (107385) was the key figure), many of
the patterns of authority defined by Leo and Gregory the Great were revived. The idea that heretics,
however disparate, formed a network which not only stretched territorially across Europe but back in
time to the days of the empire became part of the medieval consciousness. Jewish communities faced
widespread persecution, mass conversion or even annihilation. When Pope Urban II proclaimed the
first crusade to regain the Holy Land from Islam in 1095, he used the language of Christian soldiers
led by Christ, which echoed that of Ambrose seven hundred years before. This was the new world of
medieval Christianity. Yet, even if it exercised its authority in different ways, effectively exploiting
relics and the miraculous, for instance, it was the undisputed heir of the imperial Christianity of the
ancient world.
On the other hand, recent scholarship has tended to see the church as much less influential and
homogenous that was once thought. Much of church wealth was diverted towards prestigious,
magnificent but ultimately unproductive ends. It was the Islamic economies that first stimulated the
revival of western economies. The secular elites of the Italian city states exploited the expanding
economies with ruthless opportunism. It was they who produced the most highly educated
communities in Europe and were as influential in founding universities, primarily for their own
administrative needs, as the church. It would be wrong, therefore, to end this book with a picture of a
Christianity that stifled all initiative. The medieval church simply did not have the power to destroy
inventiveness and curiosity. Even though the return of reasoned thought was to be challenged by
Catholic traditionalists, Thomas Aquinas championship of Aristotle was eventually accepted within
Catholicism. It was the interaction of religious and secular patterns of thinking that was crucial in
allowing further progress.
 CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Faith, Certainty and the Unknown God
BYZANTINE CHRISTIANITY TENDED TO REMOVE GOD AS FAR AS possible from the believer. An important
Syrian writer of the early sixth century, known as Pseudo-Dionysius, as his works were once
believed to be the genuine thoughts of the Dionysius converted by Paul, expressed his belief that the
saved and hidden truth about the celestial intelligences should be concealed through the inexpressible
and the sacred and be inaccessible to the common masses We have no knowledge at all of Gods
incomprehensible and ineffable transcendence and invisibility. Here is the complete contrast to
Eunomius belief that the nature of God could be grasped through reason. In Pseudo-Dionysius
theology human beings can make no contribution to the understanding of God. This, however, leaves
any theological statements, other than apophatic ones, those which define God only by saying what he
is not, without foundation. If God is unknowable, how can one proclaim, with any meaning, that he is
one in substance with his Son or even that Jesus was his incarnated Son?
Pseudo-Dionysius theology is the end result of many of the processes that we have followed in
this book. It has been one of its main arguments that theological certainty is impossible to achieve.
Once the emerging church had decided to integrate the Hebrew scriptures with the gospel memories
of Jesus Christ and the distinctive, if complex, letters of Paul and proclaim them as equally the Word
of God, one was left with the challenge of finding any kind of coherent message from them. This did
not matter in the early days of Christianity because Christians were free to form their own
communities and there was no means by which an orthodoxy could be declared, let alone enforced.
The New Testament did not, as such, exist. So different communities had their own sacred texts, their
own methods of worship and made their own relationships with Judaism or pagan rituals. It is
possible that some form of united church was evolving in the third century but the turning point was
the adoption of Christianity by Constantine in 312. Constantine probably had no appreciation of the
diversity of Christian belief but his patronage of the church forced him, and Theodosius I after him, to
define the nature of a Christianity acceptable to the state. Church and state moved towards a
symbiotic relationship and as the state became more authoritarian so it expected the church to be the
same.
The consequence was the silencing of debate not only within the church but across the whole
spectrum of intellectual activity. The imposition of the Nicene Trinity, with Jesus Christ elevated into
the Godhead, was followed by legislation banning the alternatives, and including the harassment of
heretics and the burning of their books. Pagan worship was largely suppressed in the following two
centuries and Jews were pushed to the margins of society even if their religion did manage to survive.
This legislative programme was not always easy to enforce but there were important shifts in
intellectual life that reinforced the challenge to learning and free debate. The traditions of reason and
free enquiry which had characterised Greek thought from the sixth century BC onwards may only have
reached a tiny elite but it only needs the effective use of reason by a few for major progress to be
made. Only one Pythagoras, or a follower of him, was needed to produce a mathematical proof which
then acted as a template for many others and so defined an academic discipline still vibrant today.
Euclid (c.300 BC) consolidated it in a series of interlocking mathematical proofs which have never
been disproved.
The Greeks gave priority to the exploration of the natural world and the explanation of the forces
that underpinned it. They placed human beings at the centre of all things so that their thoughts on
politics, history or ethics concentrated on relationships that were not subject to supernatural forces.
Man is the measure of all things, as the philosopher Protagoras put it in the fifth century BC. The
progress they made is apparent even today: every modern academic discipline, including mathematics
and the sciences, is rooted in the approaches defined for it by the Greeks.
All this was already under threat with the decline of the empire. Intellectual life needs cities,
schools, including those for young adults taught by philosophers, and a hunger for knowledge. Above
all it needs optimism and a confidence in the possibility of progress. An empire succumbing to attack
can hardly provide these but there were specific ways in which imperial Christianity created an ethos
in which free discussion was next to impossible. The subjugation of philosophical thought went hand
in hand with a denigration of the natural world.
The roots of this denigration may lie in Pauls rejection of the wisdom of the wise but Paul was
echoed by almost every church father. Lactantius questions the point of worldly knowledge. What will
the enquirer gain, for instance, from knowing where the Nile rises or the other subjects which the
scientists rave about? It is not in the interests of the church, opines Basil of Caesarea, for believers to
turn from the simplicity of their faith to the study of the essence of things. John Chrysostom pleads
with God to clear his mind of secular learning and reasoning itself, so that he is open to the reception
of divine words. Augustine too denies the need for any form of curiositas and subjects secular
learning to sacred ends. While biblical texts continued to be cited and there was much talk of reliance
on the scriptures, it was the abdication of any form of reasoned thought that predominated. This was
an age where even the elite succumbed to credulity and the reassertion of reason in the later Middle
Ages was to be a tortuous and contested process.
Any incentive for independent thought was also crushed by the threat of punishment in the afterlife.
No empirical evidence for a world beyond this one could be provided; it was conceived purely in the
imagination. It involved a number of quite sophisticated, if unprovable, concepts: that a soul
encapsulates the essence of a human being, that the soul survives in some form after the physical death
of the body and can feel pain or pleasure in the supernatural world, that God is willing to inflict
eternal pain on those who offend. Jesus did talk of a judgement in which believers in him would be
saved and the rest cast out. The gospel of Matthew suggests that salvation depends on ones
behaviour, in helping the poor, for instance, implying that any committed Christian will be saved.
(Those who reject Christ have invariably been denied salvation.) By the fourth century this no longer
held. Augustine elaborated on eternal suffering in hell but now even sincere Christians could be sent
there if God did not extend them his grace or they held the wrong beliefs about his nature. One can
think of few more committed Christians than Origen or Ulfilas, the missionary to the Goths, but the
subordinationist beliefs of both now made it likely they would go to hell. In short, the nature of the
afterlife recorded in the gospels, disturbing enough even in this context, was distorted by the political
needs of the imperial church.
Augustine worried over how belief in orthodox doctrine could be justified and thought deeply
about the concept of faith. It is, however, a difficult concept to use, largely because it has a variety of
shifting meanings. The word has connotations of trust and loyalty that give it a positive tone. The
ability to have faith is thus seen as a virtue and, in Christian terms, the faithful are to be applauded.
However, this can often lead to believing in the unknown because one is told to, so that faith
becomes a medium through which conformity is enforced. Faith in God has no merit, if human reason
provides proof for it, argued Bernard of Clairvaux, the enormously influential twelfth-century
Cistercian monk.
 Then there is the very different use of the word as in articles of faith, specific items of belief that
are declared impossible to prove through reason. From the historians point of view, there is much
that is arbitrary about what becomes accepted as an article and what does not. The Nicene Trinity
only became an undisputed article of faith when it was imposed by Theodosius in 381. The perpetual
virginity of Mary has no scriptural backing (in fact, it seems to contradict scripture) and appears to
have evolved in the fourth century, notably in the works of Jerome, as the result of the increasing
veneration of the Virgin as Theotokos, the bearer of God. It is hard to find any unambiguous
scriptural support or theological rationale for the resurrection of the body as a physical rather than
spiritual entity at the Last Judgement, although this did not prevent Augustine and the other church
fathers from fantasising on the subject.
When one reads studies of faith and reason critically, one can often spot how the word faith
shifts between different meanings (whether the writer intends this or not) and the arguments in defence
of faith lose coherence. The positive connotations of the term all too often cloak the unresolved
philosophical problems inherent in the concept. This is particularly worrying when faith is used as a
justification of authority. Even in the twelfth century, intelligent Christians could see the intellectual
stagnation that was the result. Abelard (10791142), the most brilliant mind of his generation,
explored the issue in his Collationes, a dialogue between a Christian, a philosopher and a Jew.
Human understanding increases as the years pass and one age succeeds another yet in faith the
area in which threat of error is most dangerous there is no progress This is the sure result of the
fact that one is never allowed to investigate what should be believed about what is said among ones
own people, or to escape punishment for raising doubts about what is said by everyone People
profess themselves to believe what they admit they cannot understand, as if faith consisted in uttering
words rather than in mental understanding. The problem could not be expressed more clearly.
This book began with what was an intense emotional experience undergone by a small group of
Jews in Jerusalem after their spiritual leader had been crucified by the Roman authorities in
collaboration with the Jewish priesthood. That experience is irrecoverable but very soon Jesus was
being conceived in formulas that used Jewish terminology, all that they had to hand, but which also
transcended these formulas so as to give him a divine status. It came to be believed that God required
his son to suffer so horribly so as to lift the weight of sinfulness that was perceived to be the
predominant feature of humanity. The movement became sustainable, its teachings and beliefs passing
from one generation to another and transferring into the spiritually complex world of the Greeks and
then still further afield, surviving and adapting to different cultural contexts.
It was when attempts were made to bring order to Christianity that problems arose. First, it was
impossible to find secure foundations on which to build an enduring institutional framework for a
church. In the end the doctrine of apostolic succession, the passing on of an original deposit of
faith from generation to generation of the priesthood, proved the most effective rationale for stability.
This did not, of course, mean that the deposit of faith was in itself a coherent body of belief. Neither
scripture, nor philosophy nor tradition provided a stable base for theology. To say, with Pseudo-
Dionysius, that we have no knowledge at all of Gods incomprehensible and ineffable transcendence
and invisibility is a recognition of this fact.
Second, boundaries could only be drawn around orthodoxy by excluding those defined as heretics.
Orthodoxy and heresy were inseparable, although where the boundary between them was drawn was
always arbitrary. It was a particular and unhappy feature of Christianity that the punishments decreed
for those who found themselves on the wrong side of the fence were so dire. They leave a
contradiction at the heart of the Christian ethical tradition. What does it mean to talk of a loving God
whose forgiveness appears so limited?
None of this invalidates the experiences of Christians who found comfort in their own
communities, the pattern of rituals and the sense that they at least would be saved if they conformed to
the demands of their faith. One has to try and balance the achievements of Christian communities in
providing security for their members through ritual and mutual care with the loss of the lively
tradition of intellectual thought which had been preserved in the Greek world over many centuries. In
the short term, for many Christians, this may have been of no concern, but in the long term societies
have never prospered without the rational underpinning that allows progress. This appreciation of
reason went into abeyance for some centuries as the rule of faith was enforced.
This is too bleak as a conclusion. The churches have fulfilled many needs. The belief that the
divine has reached out to humanity through becoming human has provided spiritual inspiration and
comfort for many. Christian communities did integrate principles of mutual support into their
everyday life and this provided security for many in a wider society that was often unforgiving. Pace
Augustine, most Christians have trusted that their commitment to Christ will offer them salvation in an
immaterial world beyond this one.
Every society develops rituals in which the most profound moments of human existence, including
birth and death, are commemorated and Christianity has evolved sophisticated ways of doing this by
linking these inevitable events to the wider Christian story. While the institution of the church seems
to have gone far beyond anything envisaged by Jesus, there have been times of breakdown, at the end
of the Roman empire in the west, for instance, when the church has provided a framework of
administration and cohesion which has helped community life survive. Again, while it is hard to find
a coherent Christian ethics from the various scriptural traditions the Old Testament, the gospels and
the letters of Paul offer very different perspectives a commitment to ethical standards has been an
essential part of Christian life. In todays world, Christianity has often provided an effective medium
for challenging the corruption and oppression of elites.
The adoption of the scriptures may have been far more of a protracted process than modern
Christians are led to believe but they have remained at the core of western culture ever since the
fourth century. Vast amounts of resources have been transferred into the glorification of God in the
arts and architecture. One has only to reflect on Dantes Divine Comedy, Miltons Paradise Lost, the
works of Dostoyevsky, as well as art or music, to recognise this. Again none of this might have been
imagined from the teachings of Jesus, but it is the legacy of the Christianisation of the west.
Yet while in some ways Christianity broadened human perspectives, in others it has narrowed
them. One phrase has haunted me as I have been writing this book. It comes from Themistius, the
pagan orator, who pleaded with the emperor Jovian for religious tolerance. He talks of how God
rejoices in the diversity of human society and how he actually responds to being worshipped in a
variety of ways. Such an approach became inconceivable within Christianity. Even today one senses
a fear that pervades Christian worship that God will be offended if things are not done the right way.
Yet it is hard to see on what grounds one could ever build a consensus on what is this right way.
This is surely the most important lesson any study of theological debate teaches us. While it makes
sense to accept that we are naturally religious, imaginative about the spiritual possibilities of a life
beyond materialism, anxious to find deeper ethical truths which will enable us to live in harmony
with each other and the over-exploited planet we live on, we appear to be without the means to define
the supernatural in any coherent way. One of the most enduring legacies of the Christianisation of the
west is the tension between institutionalised formulations of God and the deeper, more free-ranging,
spiritual impulses of the human mind.
 Notes
I have used notes sparingly, to explore particular issues that might not be easy to find in the
Further Reading or to provide extra information that could not be incorporated into the main text.
My intention is that the books listed in the Further Reading will between them offer more than
enough material for those who wish to continue further research.
Preface
1. See the excellent chapter by Segal, The Resurrection: Faith or History? in Robert Stewart (ed.),
The Resurrection of Jesus, John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright in Dialogue, Minneapolis,
MN, 2008.
Part One: Beginnings
Chapter One: A Trial
1. Ann Wroe, Pilate: The Biography of an Invented Man, London, 2000, is an imaginatively written
study.
2. The alternative account in Matthew, Mark and Luke that the crucifixion took place during the
Passover is therefore unlikely to be accurate. Geza Vermes The Passion, London and New York,
2005, sets out the details.
3. See Christopher Rowland, Christian Origins, second edition, London, 2002, p. 91, for a good
summary of Jewish belief on the Messiah.
4. Paula Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, London, 2000, explores this idea, pp.
2334.
Chapter Two: The Seedbed: Judaism in the First Century AD
1. Ernest Renan, Vie de Jesus, Paris, 1863; English translation, London, 1864.
2. See Rowland, Christian Origins and Martin Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of
Ancient Civilizations, London and New York, 2007, for recent accounts of Judaism in this
century.
Chapter Three: Jesus before the Gospels
1. See Richard Horsley, Bandits, Prophets and Messiahs: Popular Movements in the Time of
Jesus, new edition, Harrisburg, PA, 1999 and Sean Freyne, Galilee and Judaea in the First
Century in Margaret Mitchell and Frances Young (eds), The Cambridge History of Christianity,
volume 1, Cambridge, 2006, for the background.
2. John Meiers summing up that it is a second century pastiche of traditions from the canonical
Gospels, recycled through the memories and lively imagination of Christians who have heard the
Gospels read and preached many a time is a fair assessment but fails to acknowledge that some
of the material is not found in the canonical gospels and may come from independent early
sources. John Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, New York, 1991, pp.
11718.
 3. This quotation is often attributed to Albert Schweitzer but the original source is the Jesuit
theologian George Tyrrell (18611909).
4. See Meier, A Marginal Jew, volume 1, p. 265.
5. Excavations by the University of Nebraska show that although Bethsaida had been an important
city a thousand years earlier, there was very little building in the first century AD. There are the
remains of fishing equipment from the period.
6. Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, Grand
Rapids, MI and Cambridge, 2006.
7. When the diaries kept daily by a selected group of British observers during the Second World
War were compared to their own memories thirty years later, there was virtually no
correspondence at all. Any relationship between the incident they had described in the diary and
the story they told in 1975 was almost entirely coincidental. They got everything wrong: date,
places, the sequence of events. From the Foreword by Philip Zeigler to Our Longest Days: A
Peoples History of the Second World War, London, 2008.
8. From Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus and the Word, English translation, 1926, New York, p. 8.
9. E.P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus, London, 1993.
10. Luke talks of an empire-wide decree that required Joseph and Mary to go to Bethlehem. There is
no record of such a decree. Roman taxation worked on a provincial basis and Quirinius did carry
out a survey of Judaea in AD 6 when it became a province. However, Jesus would have been
about ten by then. The survey would not have reached Nazareth as that was not part of a Roman
province. Even if it had been, subjects were taxed on the land in their villages and listed for a
poll tax. It would have made no administrative sense to have summoned Mary and Joseph and
other descendants of David to Bethlehem. Whatever may have taken them to Bethlehem at the time
of Jesus birth, it would not have been a census by the Romans. This has not prevented biblical
scholars from attempting highly imaginative but usually unconvincing explanations in order to
defend Lukes text.
11. Philip Davies, Qumran Studies in J. Rogerson and Judith Lieu (eds), The Oxford Handbook of
Biblical Studies, Oxford, 2006.
12. G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew, London, 1973; see also, among other studies, his The Changing Faces
of Jesus, London and New York, 2000.
13. Some studies which follow this path are Paula Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ, second edition,
New Haven and London, 2000; Bart Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New
Millennium, Oxford, 1999; Geza Vermes, The Authentic Gospel of Jesus, London and New York,
2003.
14. Vermes, Authentic Gospel of Jesus, p. 416. See also Rowland, Christian Origins, p. 147.
Chapter Four: Breaking Away: the First Christianities
1. Note the unhealthy preoccupation with suffering in Mel Gibsons The Passion which seemed to
want to coerce converts into the church on the grounds of this suffering alone. Before the last
ghastly twenty-four hours, Jesus life appears to have been of higher quality than that of the mass
 of his fellow Jews with, in contrast to Paul, no record of any physical disability.
2. The gospel of Peter is reproduced in full in Bart Ehrman, Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not
Make It into the New Testament, Oxford and New York, 2003, p. 31.
3. The work of Jon Levenson, e.g. (with Kevin Madigan), Resurrection: The Power of God for
Christians and Jews, New Haven and London, 2008, is especially important here. A resurrection
was not expected, even though stories that Jesus would rise again after three days were later
inserted into the gospels (e.g. in Mark 8:31, 9:9, 10:334: if these were authentic sayings of Jesus
they had been ignored by the disciples).
4. Justin Martyr, First Apology, Chapter Twenty-one, gives a list of gods and emperors who are
believed to have ascended into heaven. Depictions of emperors being welcomed into heaven,
sometimes as spirits, sometimes in chariots, are common in Roman art.
5. Alan Segal, Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion, New York and
London, 2004, p. 430. See also Jon Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel, New
Haven, CN, and London, 2006, p. 189, where he notes the Jewish belief, echoed by Paul in 1
Corinthians 15:44, that resurrection was thought to yield a transformed and perfected form of
bodily existence and thus a state of being both like and unlike anything we can know in the flesh.
6. See a concise summary of the issue of the addition of Marks ending in P. Achtemeier, J. Green
and M.M. Thompson, Introducing the New Testament: Its Literature and Theology, Grand
Rapids, MI and Cambridge, 2001, p. 143.
7. I am not arguing that the disciples consciously made up a story but any study of the third day
must begin with assessing the enormous stress that the disciples were under. The concentration of
reports of the physical appearances of Jesus within a short period just after the crucifixion
deserves noting. See, as a general survey, Geza Vermes, The Resurrection, New York and
London, 2008.
8. Minneapolis, 2003, p. 781. As the quotation suggests, Tom Wright seems to assume that there is a
right interpretation that has to be disproved. Historians would work from the opposite direction.
9. M. Borg and N.T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, London, 1999, p. 118.
10. Vermes, The Resurrection, Chapter 14, makes these points.
11. See Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity, Grand Rapids,
MI and Cambridge, 2003, especially the early chapters.
12. Ibid., pp.98101.
13. Note, in a pagan context, the rooms set aside for ritual banquets at the important healing shrine of
Aesclepius at Epidaurus in Peloponnesian Greece.
14. The Messianic Rule, translated by Vermes in The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls, London, 1997,
pp. 15960.
Chapter Five: What Did Paul Achieve?
1. The areas of disagreement over Pauls life, work and theology are so extensive that any short
account must be inadequate. A model has been provided by Jerome Murphy-OConnor who in his
 Paul: A Critical Life, Oxford, 1996, sets out all the issues, outlining his own stand on them. In his
subsequent shorter Paul: His Story, Oxford 2004, he simply gives the life and assessment based
on his conclusions. Murphy-OConnor deals with Pauls Roman citizenship in Paul: A Critical
Life, pp. 3941.
2. The sequence of letters is disputed and many scholars place 1 Thessalonians first, although the
emotional immaturity of Galatians in comparison to, say, Thessalonians, suggests that it is one of
Pauls first attempts at writing to a recalcitrant community.
3. The Vatican has recently settled on AD 8 and commemorated the two thousandth anniversary of
Pauls birth in 2008.
4. Murphy-OConnor is particularly good at outlining the demands of the journeys.
5. Stephen Mitchell, Anatolia: Land, Men and Gods in Asia Minor, volume 2, Oxford, 1994,
Chapter Fifteen.
6. See ibid., Chapter Sixteen, Part Four, pp. 3742 for a detailed analysis.
7. See Murphy-OConnor, Paul: A Critical Life, p. 269, for the argument.
8. Jerome Murphy-OConnor, Paul the Letter-Writer, Collegeville, MN, 1995, for details.
Chapter Six: The Letter to the Hebrews
1. See, for instance, Raymond Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, New York and
London, 1997, for a reliable introduction to the issues.
2. Kenneth Schenck, A Brief Guide to Philo, Louisville, KY, 2005.
3. Ibid.; see here the discussion Philo and Hebrews, which has references to some recent studies
of the relationship.
Chapter Seven: Fifty Years On: the Gospel Writers Reflect on Jesus
1. See R.A. Horsley, J.A. Draper and J.M. Foley (eds), Performing the Gospel: Orality, Memory
and Mark, Minneapolis, MN, 2006.
2. Some scholars have suggested a setting in Rome itself. This view originates from the belief that
Papias Mark is Irenaeus Mark and that Peter passed on his information in Rome before he died
there. The evidence for Rome has recently been gathered in Brian Incigneris The Gospel to the
Romans: The Setting and Rhetoric of Marks Gospel, Leiden, 2003, but it remains
circumstantial.
3. See Chapter Three, note 10, above.
4. The genealogies are contrasted in Geza Vermes The Nativity, London and New York, 2006, p.
36. They cannot be reconciled.
Chapter Eight: John and the Jerusalem Christians
1. Brown, Introduction to the New Testament, is good for the main issues.
Chapter Nine: Creating a New Testament
1. On formation of the canon, see Jaroslav Pelikan, Whose Bible is It?: A History of the Scriptures
through the Ages, London and New York, 2005, and Karen Armstrong, The Bible: The
Biography, London, 2007, for introductory surveys. Scholarly analysis is to be found in Rogerson
and Lieu, Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies.
2. See David Taylor, Christian Regional Diversity in P. Esler (ed.), The Early Christian World,
volume 1, London and New York, 2000, pp. 33043.
3. E.g. Edgar Goodspeed in his An Introduction to the New Testament, Chicago, 1937.
4. Frances Young, The Theology of the Pastoral Letters, Cambridge, 1994, p. 65.
5. See Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, New
York, 2005.
6. Letter to General Alexander Smyth, 17 January 1825.
7. Bauckhams introduction to the Book of Revelation in John Barton and John Muddiman (eds), The
Oxford Bible Commentary, Oxford, 2001.
Chapter Ten: No Second Coming: the Search for Stability
1. James Ault, Spirit and Flesh, New York, 2004. See especially Chapter Thirteen,
Fundamentalism and Tradition.
2. A short introduction to the Didache is to be found in Henry Chadwick, The Church in Ancient
Society, Oxford, 2001, Chapter Ten.
3. The most exhaustive study of the early church in Rome is Peter Lampes, From Paul to
Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries, translated from the German by
Michael Steinhauser, Minneapolis, MN, 2003. A late fourth-century sarcophagus which, it is
claimed, contains the bones of Paul has been discovered under the basilica of St Pauls outside
Rome.
Part Two: Becoming Christian
Chapter Eleven: Toeholds in a Wider Empire
1. F. Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World at the Time of Philip II, second
edition, London, 1972.
2. J. North, M. Beard and S. Price, Religions of Rome, Cambridge, 1998, p. 267. This book is
useful for discussing the range of religious life in the empire.
3. Ramsay MacMullen cites this example in his Christianizing the Empire (AD 100400), New
Haven and London, 1984.
4. Mitchell, Anatolia, volume 2, p. 48.
5. The two texts are Tertullian On Baptism and the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, both of
which are dated to the early third century.
Chapter Twelve: Open Borders: the Overlapping Worlds of Christians and Jews
1. Skari Hakkinen, Ebionites in Antti Marjanen and Petri Luomanen, A Companion to Second-
 century Christian Heretics, Leiden and Boston, 2005.
2. Quoted in Heiki Raisanen, Marcion in ibid. For Marcions views on the canon, see Harry
Gamble, Marcion and the canon in Mitchell and Young, Cambridge History of Christianity,
volume one, Cambridge, 2006.
3. The list includes the seven letters scholars still accept as genuine, see p. 47, plus 2
Thessalonians, Ephesians and Colossians.
4. This extract comes from Justins Second Apology, 13.4.
5. Daniel Boyarin, author of one of the most perceptive studies of the issue, Border Lines, The
Partition of Judaeo-Christianity, Philadelphia, PA, 2004, is surely right to say that even if there
is a boundary equipped with customs officers, there will always be individuals who fail to
recognise it as a boundary at all or choose to ignore it.
Chapter Thirteen: Was There a Gnostic Challenge?
1. From the Book of Thomas the Contender 2.138, 1418. Quoted in Bart Ehrman, Lost
Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, Oxford and New York,
2003, p. 124.
2. Strictly speaking this is the Gospel of Judas but, in order to avoid confusion with Judas Iscariot,
the writer had added twin, Didymus in Greek, Thomas in Hebrew, which reflects the legend that
Judas Thomas was indeed a twin brother of Jesus, at least on a spiritual level.
3. From Von Harnacks History of Dogma, originally published in German for the first time in 1885.
Quoted in Karen King, What is Gnosticism?, Cambridge, MA and London, 2003, p. 55, at the
beginning of an extensive discussion of Von Harnacks views.
4. See E. Pagels and K. King, Reading Judas and the Shaping of Christianity, New York and
London, 2005, especially Part One, Chapter One, Judas: Betrayer or Favoured Disciple?
5. See, for instance, A. DeConick, The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says,
London and New York, 2007.
Chapter Fourteen: The Idea of a Church
1. Stuart Hall, The Early Idea of the Church in G.R. Evans (ed.), The First Christian Theologians:
An Introduction to Theology in the Early Church, Oxford, 2004, p. 49.
2. Ehrman, Lost Christianities, covers these issues well.
Chapter Fifteen: To Compromise or Reject: Confronting the Material World
1. Many examples from this chapter draw on the excellent overview by Carolyn Osiek, The self-
defining praxis of the developing ecclesia, Chapter Fourteen, in Mitchell and Young, Cambridge
History of Christianity.
2. See Jan Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife, London and New York, 2002, especially
Chapter Five.
3. See, for instance, Justin, First Apology, Chapter Twenty-nine; The Octavius by Minucius, Chapter
Thirty.
4. This is normally seen as an early version of the so-called Apostles Creed, which runs as
follows: I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ,
his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin
Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell.
On the third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right
hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence he shall come again to judge the living and the
dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the
forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. This final form is
only first recorded in c.700 but the tradition remained that the creed went back to the apostles
themselves, each one of the twelve contributing a verse.
5. There is an excellent summary of developments by Daniel Sheerin, Eucharistic Liturgy, Chapter
Thirty-five in Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David Hunter (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Early
Christian Studies, Oxford, 2008.
Chapter Sixteen: Celsus Confronts the Christians
1. This survives in Origens answer to it, Contra Celsum. The extracts Origen uses have been
brought together as a single text: Celsus On the True Doctrine: A Discourse against the
Christians, Introduction and translation by R. Joseph Hoffmann, New York and Oxford, 1987 and
this is used here. Origens response is considered in Chapter Eighteen.
2. Many of the Meditations of the Stoic philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius stress the way in
which all things are bound together. When the Christians followed Genesis in saying that human
beings were made in the image of God and so superior to the rest of creation, they broke this link
and later theologians claimed that Christians were free to exploit the earth and its creations as
they willed.
Chapter Seventeen: The Challenge of Greek Philosophy
1. The Greek approach to creationism is now covered in David Sedley, Creationism and its Critics
in Antiquity, Berkeley, CA, and London, 2007.
2. Eric Osborn, Clement of Alexandria, Cambridge, 2005.
Chapter Eighteen: Origen and Early Christian Scholarship
1. Well covered in Anthony Grafton and Megan Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of
the Book, Cambridge, MA and London, 2006.
2. This idea comes from Caroline Walker Bynum in The Resurrection of the Body, New York, 1995,
p. 66.
Chapter Nineteen: New Beginnings: the Emergence of a Latin Christianity
1. David Wright, Tertullian, in Esler, The Early Christian World, volume 2, pp. 1,02747, p.
1,031.
2. These issues are discussed in Peter Browns important study, The Body and Society, London and
New York, 1988.
3. The title of a study of Tertullian by Eric Osborn, Cambridge, 1997.
 Chapter Twenty: Victims or Volunteers: Christian Martyrs
1. The Passion of The Holy Martyrs Felicity and Perpetua, available online at
www.newadvent.org.
2. 4 Maccabees is a martyrdom narrative. 2 Maccabees, which is part of the canonical scriptures,
has an account of the martyrdom within the wider context of the persecution.
3. The account of the martyrdoms at Lyons is to be found in Eusebius, History of the Church, 5.1.41.
4. Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, London, 1986, p. 446.
Chapter Twenty-one: The Spread of Christian Communities
1. See W.V. Harris (ed.), The Spread of Christianity in the First Four Centuries, Leiden and
Boston, 2005.
2. Full text in John Behr, Gaul in Mitchell and Young, Cambridge History of Christianity, volume
1, p. 378.
3. See Taylor, Christian Regional Diversity, p. 332.
4. Rodney Stark in his The Rise of Christianity, Princeton, NJ, 1995, suggests a decade on decade
growth rate of 40 per cent. He does not tackle the diversity of Christianities, the very uneven
spread of the movement or the decades of persecution where the institutional church must have
faltered, all of which make any consistent growth over the empire as a whole unlikely. In fact, he
provides very little historical evidence to back his calculations.
5. Mitchell, Anatolia, volume 2, p. 63.
Part Three: The Imperial Church
Chapter Twenty-two: The Motives of Constantine
1. An allusion to Psalm 98, Sing to the Lord a new song.
2. Quoted in Beard, North and Price, Religions of Rome, volume 1, p. 367.
3. See Caroline Humfress essay on Constantines laws in N. Lenski (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to the Age of Constantine, Cambridge, 2006.
4. See H.A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance, Baltimore, MD, and
London, 2000, pp. 292305, for a full discussion of the Oration.
5. Quoted in Theodorets fifth-century History of the Church, reproduced in the Appendix of Rowan
Williams, Arius, second edition, London, 2001.
6. Socrates, Ecclesiastical History, Book One, Chapter Six.
7. The number in Abrahams household was 318, which seems to have been transferred for use here.
8. In his Oration before Constantine of 336, Eusebius states: This only begotten Word of God [i.e.
Christ] reigns, from ages which had no beginning, to infinite and endless ages, the partner of his
Fathers kingdom. Nothing is said of any moment of creation and partner is an imprecise way of
expressing the relationship.
 9. M. Edwards, The First Council of Nicaea in Mitchell and Young, Cambridge History of
Christianity, volume 1, p. 564.
10. Richard Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, Edinburgh, 1988, p. 168.
11. See Mark Johnson, Architecture of Empire in Lenski, Cambridge Companion to the Age of
Constantine, and Johannes Deckers, Constantine the Great and Early Christian Art in Jeffrey
Spier (ed.), Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art, New Haven, CN, and London, 2007.
Chapter Twenty-three: Debating the Nature of God
1. Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-century Trinitarian Theology,
Oxford, 2004, p. 70.
2. An Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature, available online at
www.ccel.org.
3. Quoted in M. Wiles, Archetypal Heresy: Arianism Through the Centuries, Oxford, 1996, p. 28.
Chapter Twenty-four: The Stifling of Christian Diversity
1. The events of this chapter are covered in detail in my AD 381: Heretics, Pagans and the
Christian State, London, 2008.
2. Epistle 130, quoted in Rosemary Radford Ruether, Gregory of Nazianzus: Rhetor, and
Philosopher, Oxford, 1969, p. 48.
Chapter Twenty-five: The Assault on Paganism
1. Neil McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital, Berkeley, CA, and
London, 1994, pp. 4453, has full details of the manoeuvrings by which Ambrose had become
bishop.
2. E. Sauer, The Archaeology of Religious Hatred, Stroud, 2003, has the details.
3. It is reproduced in Bart Ehrman and Andrew Jacobs (eds), Christianity in Late Antiquity, 300
450 CE: A Reader, New York and Oxford, 2004, p. 57.
4. Richard Hanson, The Doctrine of the Trinity Achieved in 381 in Studies in Christian Antiquity,
Edinburgh, 1985, pp. 2434.
Chapter Twenty-six: No one is honoured before him: the Rise of the Bishop
1. For Paulinus on art see Jeffrey Spier, The Earliest Christian Art: From Personal Salvation to
Imperial Power in Spier, Picturing the Bible, pp. 1820. Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late
Antiquity, Berkeley, CA, and London, 2005, Chapter Four for a discussion of bishops and the
ascetic way of life.
2. In his Voting about God in Early Church Councils, New Haven, CN, and London, 2006, Ramsay
MacMullen notes how accounts of the church in this period tend to ignore the evidence of
violence.
3. By Mark the Deacon, accessible through search engines.
4. See Rapp, Holy Bishops, p. 242 for a survey.
5. Peter Chrysologos, quoted in P. Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire,
Hanover and London, 2001, p. 46.
6. D. Janes, God and Gold in Late Antiquity, Cambridge, 1998, p. 57.
Chapter Twenty-seven: An Obsession with the Flesh
1. The quotation comes from Jeromes Letter to Eustochium, No. 22 in collections of his letters.
2. Doctors of the Church: an accolade awarded to major intellectual figures in the church, originally
just four. The three others from this period honoured in the west are Ambrose, Augustine and
Gregory the Great.
3. The fullest cycle in the western church based on the Protoevangelium is Giottos frescoes in the
Scrovegni Chapel in Padua.
4. Quoted in M. Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early
Middle Ages, Oxford, 2000, p. 39.
5. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, especially Chapter Two, The Copyists of the early Christian
Writings.
6. Megan Hale Williams, The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian
Scholarship, Chicago and London, 2006, p. 105.
Chapter Twenty-eight: The End of Optimism: Augustine and the Consequences of Sin
1. M.W.F. Stone, Augustine and Medieval Philosophy in Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann
(eds), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, Cambridge, 2001, p. 263.
2. In his Soliloquies 1.13.22.
3. The City of God. Book XXI, Chapter 12.
4. Ibid., Book XXI, Chapters 4 and 5.
5. Ibid. From the Preface.
Chapter Twenty-nine: Divine but Human
1. Byzantine derives from the original Greek name of Constantinople, Byzantium. Many date the
birth of the Byzantine empire to 330, the foundation of Constantinople; others delay it to the reign
of Justinian two hundred years later.
2. It was another thirty years before the emperor Theodosius II allowed his body to be returned to
Constantinople where it came to be deeply venerated. John was later to be revered alongside
Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus as one of the three Holy Hierarchs of the Orthodox
Church. His body was looted from the Church of the Holy Apostles by the Venetians during the
Fourth Crusade of 1204 and presented to the pope. The head was returned to the east in 2004 and
is now in a monastery on Mount Athos. It is credited with many miracles.
3. The legislation is detailed in Fergus Millar, A Greek Roman Empire, Power and Belief under
Theodosius II, 408450, Berkeley, CA, and London, 2007.
4. Full text in Leo Donald Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils, 325787: Their History
and Theology, Collegeville, MN, 1990, pp. 1612.
5. The council is now fully covered in Richard Price and Michael Gaddis, The Acts of the Council
of Chalcedon, Liverpool, 2007.
Chapter Thirty: The Closing of the Schools
1. Quoted in Julia Smith, Europe after Rome, Oxford, 2005, pp. 25960.
2. Patrick Gray, The Legacy of Chalcedon in Michael Maas (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to
the Age of Justinian, Cambridge, 2005, p. 235.
3. Christian Wildberg, Philosophy in the Age of Justinian in ibid., p. 316.
4. Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 30811, The Council of Nicaea II.
5. See Cyril Mango, The Revival of Learning, Chapter Eight in Cyril Mango (ed.), The Oxford
History of Byzantium, Oxford and New York, 2002.
Chapter Thirty-one: A Fragile Church: Christianity and the Collapse of the Western
Empire
1. The word Catholic derives from the Greek for universal. Strictly speaking, historians use it of
both eastern and western churches before the formal split between them in 1054, from when it
was used only of the western church, but it seems the best term to define the church of the papacy
as it was now emerging.
2. There is a good summary of the issues in Carol Harrison, Augustine: Christian Truth and
Fractured Humanity, Oxford, 2000, pp. 1547.
3. A philosophical survey is provided by John Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptised,
Cambridge, 1994, pp. 23945, Towards a Theory of Persecution. See also Augustines letter to
a military tribune, Bonifatius, in 417 on the right of the secular powers to inflict punishment,
quoted in Serge Lancel, St Augustine, translated by Antonia Nevill, London, 2002, p. 303.
4. See Michele Rene Salzman, The Making of a Christian Aristocracy: Social and Religious
Change in the Western Roman Empire, Cambridge, MA and London, 2002.
5. Both were Christians but they were among the last generation to have access to a full range of
classical texts. Boethius was an aristocrat with a deep interest in philosophy. He translated all
Aristotles works on logic into Latin and thus preserved them for the west when Greek was being
forgotten. He had hoped to add the works of Plato and even combine the two great philosophers
into a coherent text but, for reasons that are unclear, he was imprisoned by the normally tolerant
Theodoric and eventually executed in 524. Before he died he composed a slight but attractive
work, The Consolations of Philosophy, which counsels a concentration on the Good, the only
constant in a world of constantly changing fortunes. It became one of the most popular texts of the
Middle Ages.
Cassiodorus (490 c.585), another aristocrat, argued for an education based on the seven
liberal arts grammar, logic, rhetoric, music, geometry, arithmetic and astronomy. In his
retirement on his estates at Vivarium in southern Italy, Cassiodorus collected both pagan and
 Christian manuscripts and set a band of monks to work copying them. They included some Greek
texts such as Eusebius History of the Church and the medical works of Galen and Hippocrates.
This was a rare initiative. In the centuries that followed, the number of classical texts recopied
became fewer so that one of the larger libraries of the early eighth century, that of the Venerable
Bede (672735), had virtually no classical works, not even, it appears, the Aeneid of Virgil.
6. The issues are well covered in John Burrow, A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles,
Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century, London,
2007, which has chapters on both the Christian histories and the revival of secular history.
7. Matthew Innes, Introduction to Early Medieval Western Europe, 300900: The Sword, the
Plough and the Book, London, 2007, pp. 3623.
8. Smith, Europe after Rome, p. 223.
 Glossary

Themes and Places

A reference book such as The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church provides much fuller
definitions for most of these entries. I have not included references to specific texts here.
AD: Anno Domini, in the year of the Lord. Dating system first elaborated in the sixth century which
started with the birth of Jesus although this is now generally believed to have taken place in 4 BC
(Before Christ).
Adoptionism: The belief that Jesus was adopted by God as his Son only at his baptism or at the
resurrection.
Adversus Judaeos texts: Christian texts first appearing in the second century which focus on the
denigration of the Jews and their religion.
Alexandria: The major city of the eastern Mediterranean, capital of the Roman province of Egypt and
an important centre of early Christianity. Its bishops played a major part in the doctrinal controversies
of the fourth and fifth centuries.
Allegory: An ancient form of literary interpretation, adapted to biblical studies, which explores
deeper meanings behind the literal words of a text.
Anathema: Words of condemnation used especially to denounce heretical views or expel heretics.
Antioch: Capital of the Roman province of Syria, the first city in which the word Christian was used
and an important centre of Christian scholarship.
Apocalyptic: Concerning the revelation of what is hidden, often in the form of a prophecy of future
events.
Apocrypha: Texts accepted as authoritative by Christians but which were not originally accepted as
such within Judaism; apocryphal also refers to texts falsely attributed to an early Christian, e.g. the
apocryphal gospel of Peter.
Apologists: Early Christian writers who wrote defences of Christian belief for pagans and the
imperial authorities.
Apophatism: The belief that God can only be defined in terms of what he is not. Essentially the
rejection of any attempt to provide a reasoned understanding of God.
Apostasy: The act of rejecting or lapsing from Christianity, often believed to be unpardonable.
Apostle: A missionary leader of the early church, especially one chosen for this role by Jesus
himself. Traditionally there are twelve apostles, including Paul who had never known Jesus.
Apostles creed: Early and simple creed of the western church, believed to originate in the responses
required of baptismal candidates.
Apostolic succession: The belief that the truth of Christian doctrine was passed by Christ to the
apostles and through them to each successive generation of bishops.
Apotheosis: The reception of an individual into heaven, a possibility recognised by both pagans and
Christians.
Aramaic: A Semitic language widely spoken across the eastern Mediterranean; the language which
Jesus himself used.
Arianism: In its correct form, the teachings of Arius, notably that Christ was an early creation of the
Father, i.e. did not exist from eternity. Used loosely and abusively from the mid-fourth century to
describe all subordinationists.
Asceticism: A complex term used to describe practices and beliefs which involved disciplining the
body and mind for spiritual purposes.
Atonement: The belief that God had willed the crucifixion of Jesus so that, through the sacrifice,
sinful humanity might be reconciled to Him.
Baptism: The rite of initiation into a Christian community inspired by the baptism of Jesus Christ by
John the Baptist.
Basilica: Originally, in Greek and Roman cities, an all-purpose meeting hall. Adapted from the time
of Constantine as a model for the larger Christian churches.
Bible: From the Greek biblia, the books, used to describe the unified body of canonical scriptures.
Bishop: Originally the overseer of a Christian community, the bishops authority grew to make him a
political as well as religious leader in the Christian city.
Byzantine empire: From Byzantium, the name of Constantinople before its rebuilding by
Constantine. The eastern Roman empire as it survived after the fall of the western Roman empire,
until 1453.
Caesarea: There were two important cities of this name the capitals of the Roman provinces of
Judaea and Cappadocia. The first was famous for the library created there by Origen, the second as
the diocese of Basil of Caesarea who built a major complex of charitable buildings, the Basileia.
Canon: Used in a Christian context to describe those texts that have authority as sacred scripture.
Cappadocian Fathers: Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, three later
fourth-century theologians who made important conceptual contributions to the doctrine of the Trinity.
Carthage: Important centre of North African Christianity from the third century onwards. The
Council of Carthage (411) attempted to resolve the schism between Donatists and Catholics by
condemning Donatism.
Catacombs: Subterranean burial chambers and passages traditionally associated with the burials of
Christians in the soft tufa rock around Rome.
Catechumen: One who is committed to membership of a Christian congregation but who has not yet
been baptised.
Catholic, Catholicism: The original meaning of the word is universal and so of the emerging church
as it defined itself in terms of the wider Christian world. Increasingly it was used of the western
church alone as it developed under growing papal power, hence Roman Catholicism.
Celibacy: The practice of sexual abstinence, especially as a requirement for the clergy. It was
gradually enforced more rigorously in the eastern and western churches and is still compulsory for
bishops of the eastern churches and all clergy in the Catholic Church.
Chalcedon, Council of, 451: Important council in which a definition of the two natures of Christ was
imposed upon the church, largely through the offices of the emperor Marcian.
Christianity: The word derives from the Greek Christos, the anointed one, a title used of Jesus
from the time of his earliest followers.
Christology: The process of defining the nature of Christ, especially, in these early centuries, his
relationship to God the Father and to the human race.
Church: The community of Christian believers as it came to define itself in the early Christian
centuries, through the definition of orthodox belief and the rejection of heresies and the consolidation
of an institutional framework.
Church fathers: A select group of early theologians whose works were considered authoritative by
the later church.
Codex, plural codices: A manuscript bound in book form, which gradually supplanted the traditional
papyrus roll, especially for the recording of Christian texts.
Constantinople: Inaugurated in 330 as his eastern capital by the emperor Constantine on the site of
the ancient city of Byzantium. Elevated by the emperors, after the councils of 381 and 451, as the
second Christian city to Rome. The councils of Constantinople of 381 and 553 were important
moments in the definition of orthodoxy.
Consubstantial: See homoousios.
Coptic, Coptic Church: Coptic is the native Egyptian language written in Greek and many early
Christian texts survive in it. The Coptic Church emerged in the fifth century from the Nestorian
dispute over the two natures of Christ as an independent church believing that Christ had only one
nature (monophysitism).
Corinth: Important Roman colony on the Isthmus between the Peloponnese and mainland Greece
whose fractured Christian community was the recipient of important letters from Paul and later (AD
90s) from Clement of Rome.
Covenant: A bond of trust, used originally to describe the relationship between the God of Israel and
his people. The sacrificial death of Christ was seen as marking a New Covenant.
Creation: While the Old Testament God was accepted as Creator, there was dispute in the early
Christian world over whether he brought order to existing chaos, as a reading of Genesis might
suggest, or created ex nihilo, out of nothing. The latter eventually became orthodox Christian belief.
Creed: A statement of Christian belief. Early creeds took different forms as Christian doctrine
evolved, but the Nicene creed as finalised at Constantinople in 381 became the standard of Christian
orthodoxy.
Crucifixion: The standard form of execution for rebels in the Roman empire, possibly adopted from
Carthaginian precedents.
Dead Sea Scrolls: A collection of papyrus rolls, 750 documents in all, discovered in caves by the
Dead Sea between 1947 and 1960. Of immense importance for understanding first-century Judaism
and the development of biblical texts.
Demiurge: From the Greek demiourgos, a craftsman, the term used by Plato to describe the force that
had created the world.
Diaspora: The scattering of Jews across the Mediterranean and ancient Near East from the sixth
century BC onwards which led to substantial Greek-speaking Jewish communities in most major cities
of the Roman empire.
Diatessaron: The combination of the four gospels into a single narrative by the Syrian Christian
Tatian in the second half of the second century. The standard text for Syriac Christians for many
centuries.
Docetism: From the Greek dokeo, I appear. The belief that Jesus only appeared as human, rather
than having an actual physical body.
Doctors of the Church: A title given to theologians whose contribution to the making of Christian
doctrine is considered outstanding. The original four Doctors were Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine and
Gregory the Great.
Doctrine: A body of teachings, normally used of beliefs which are considered central to the Christian
faith.
Dogma: An item of belief which is enforced by a religious institution and considered impossible to
refute. Dogmas are therefore inseparable from the authority of the institution concerned.
Donatists: From Donatus, the bishop of a hardline community of North African Christians who
refused to compromise with the state when Constantine offered toleration to the church.
Dura-Europus: City on the banks of the Euphrates and thus the border between the Roman and
Persian empires, famous for the earliest known (230s40s) example of a Christian house church, with
decorated baptistery.
Easter: Feast marking the celebration of the resurrection of Christ, the most important day in the
Christian calendar.
Ebionites: A Jewish Christian sect who worshipped Jesus but did not accord him any divinity or
believe in his virgin birth.
Ecumenical council: Of the whole inhabited world. The term used to describe councils which were
later seen as especially authoritative. In the first six centuries these were Nicaea (325),
Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451) and Constantinople (553).
Edessa: Capital of Armenia. Important centre of early Syriac Christianity.
Edict: An announcement, by a Roman magistrate or emperor, of a proposed course of action. Not
valid as a law until implemented as such.
Edict of Toleration: Edict issued by the emperors Constantine and Licinius in 313 in Milan extending
toleration to Christians and all other sects.
Elvira, Council of: Early fourth-century Spanish council important for its definition of codes of
correct Christian behaviour.
Ephesus: Major city of Asia Minor, famous for Pauls preaching and the legend that the Virgin Mary
lived her remaining life there with the apostle John. The two councils of Ephesus, 431 and 449, were
unsatisfactory and rowdy attempts to define the human and divine natures of Christ.
Epicureans: From the philosopher Epicurus (341270 BC). They taught that the purpose of life was to
find personal fulfilment and that the gods, while they might exist, had no effect on the world.
Epistle: From the Greek episotole-, a formal letter. The term is often used of the letters of Paul and
other Christian authors.
Eschatology: The study of the last things what will happen to the individual and the world at the
end of time.
Essenes: A highly organised ascetic community, with an estimated four thousand members at the time
of Christ, who lived in Palestine between the second century BC and second century AD. Possibly the
community described in the Dead Sea Scrolls, they are enormously important in providing material
for the understanding of first-century Judaism and the Christianity that emerged from it.
Eucharist: Thanksgiving through the sharing of the body and blood of Jesus in the form of
consecrated bread and water. The most important rite of Christian worship for those who have been
baptised.
Evangelist: One who proclaims a message, used specifically of the four writers of the canonical
gospels.
Exegesis: The process of interpreting a text, especially in this context, the canonical texts of
Christianity.
Faith: The act of trust, in the goodness of God or the saving work of Christ, for instance. Also used to
describe acceptance of those articles of Christian belief which are said to be the direct revelation of
God or beyond human reason. In general terms, the Christian faith.
Filioque: And the Son. Phrase added, first by Augustine, to the Nicene Creed so that the Holy Spirit
is said to process from both the Father and the Son, rather than the Son alone. A major cause of
dispute between western and eastern churches which has never been resolved.
Freedman: A slave who has been freed by his master, a common practice in the Roman world and
one which gave direct access to Roman citizenship (as, possibly, in the case of Pauls family).
Galilee: A region of northern Israel, the site of Jesus ministry. Ruled by a Roman client king, Herod
Antipas, during Jesus life.
Gentiles: The other nations, those who were not Jews.
Gnosticism: From the Greek gnosis, knowledge. In a second-century Christian context, a complex
set of religious beliefs which taught secret knowledge restricted to those who know.
Good Shepherd: One of the titles of Christ which has inspired the representation of Christ in much
early Christian art.
Gospel: The good news, primarily as expressed in the four gospels of the New Testament.
Grace: The bestowal of the favour of God, without which, according to Augustine, no sinner can be
saved.
Greek: The culturally dominant and sophisticated language of the eastern Mediterranean in which
most early Christian texts were written and theological debate conducted.
Hagiography: Literally writing the lives of the saints. In practice such accounts became dominated
by the miraculous exploits and unsullied goodness of the subject.
Heaven: Conceived as the home of God. The nature of heaven and who occupied or came to occupy
it alongside God was always the subject of debate.
Hebrew: A Semitic language in which most of the Old Testament was originally written. Few
Christians mastered the language and so read the scriptures in the not always accurate Greek
translation from the Hebrew, the Septuagint.
Hell: Place of eternal punishment. By Augustines day, the destination of all, Christians or pagans,
who had not been saved by the grace of God from the original sin which had condemned them to
sojourn there.
Heresy: Originally a choice to follow a specific philosophical school. In a Christian context, it came
to mean a deviant belief outside the boundaries of what was defined as orthodoxy.
Hexapla: An edition of six versions of early Greek and Hebrew texts of the scriptures made by the
scholar Origen so that inconsistencies between them could be spotted and resolved. Seen as one of
the major feats of early Christian scholarship.
High priest: The head of the Jewish priesthood, also responsible under the Roman empire to the
Romans for the good order of the province of Judaea. Title used of Christ himself in the Letter to the
Hebrews.
Holy Spirit: The third member of the Trinity. The form, nature and function of the Spirit in the church
remained confused until at least the late fourth century.
Homoousios: Of the same substance. A term first used at the Council of Nicaea (AD 325) to
describe the relationship between God the Father and Jesus the Son, eventually becoming the
orthodox terminology. To be distinguished from the terms homoios, Greek like, and homoiousios,
Greek like in substance, alternative descriptions that were declared heretical.
Hypostasis: Personality, the Greek word used to differentiate each member of the Trinity within the
single Godhead.
Incarnation: The doctrine that a pre-existent Jesus come into the world through the motherhood of the
Virgin Mary without losing his divinity.
Israel: The Hebrew nation, used especially in the sense of the chosen people of God.
Jerusalem: Ancient religious capital of Israel, the focus of Jewish worship in the Temple and the
place of Jesus crucifixion (c.AD 30).
Jesus Seminar: A group of scholars, set up in 1985, who attempted to find the real Jesus through an
analysis of his recorded sayings.
Judaea: Roman province established in AD 6, centred on what had been the ancient kingdom of
Judah. Its capital was Caesarea, not, as might be imagined, Jerusalem.
Justification (by faith): The process by which an individual is accepted as righteous in the eyes of
God. The early Christian texts on the subject, notably those of Paul, are notoriously difficult to
interpret.
Kerygma: From the Greek, preaching. The proclamation of the Christian message.
Kingdom of God: The imminent coming of the kingdom was the central focus of Jesus teaching,
even though the details of the kingdom were left unclear.
Last Supper: Jesus last meal with his disciples before the crucifixion, normally seen as instituting
the Eucharist.
Latin: Dominant language of the western Roman empire. No Christian text in Latin is known from
before AD 180 and significant Christian works only from the third and fourth centuries. Later the
language of western Christianity.
Law, or Torah: The Will of God as defined by the Jewish priesthood and enshrined in written
precepts. The degree to which Jesus had superseded the Law was a major issue in the early Christian
communities.
Liturgy: The ceremonies and texts surrounding the rituals of the church, especially that of the
Eucharist.
Logos: In Greek philosophy, a reasoned account (as in a historical or scientific narrative). Later the
term became associated with reason as an intermediary between God and man, and then through the
gospel of John with the person of Christ.
Maccabees: Jewish family who successfully led the revolt against the ruling Seleucid dynasty in
Judaea in 168 BC to independence for Judaea in 161 BC. Later accounts of their martyrdoms may well
have inspired Christian martyrs.
Manicheism: Important religious movement, based on the teachings of the third-century Persian
prophet Mani, that saw the world as an evil place which the forces of light had to re-conquer.
Martyr: In Greek witness, in the sense of a witness who suffers or dies as a result of their
allegiance to Christ.
Messiah: The anointed one. A person seen, in Jewish tradition, as especially favoured of God,
usually by being associated with kingship and success in war. Christians used the term in relation to
Jesus being the one and only Messiah, so that the Greek Christos became and remains his normal
title.
Metropolitan bishop: A bishop, normally of the capital of a Roman province, e.g. Alexandria, who is
given responsibility for all dioceses in his province.
Middle Platonism: An important second- and third-century AD development of the philosophy of
Plato that stressed the hierarchy of the immaterial world and the existence of a Supreme Good.
Provided the medium for some reconciliation between Christianity and traditional Greek philosophy.
Miracle: A wondrous happening; in Christian terms an event that transcends normal physical laws or
expectations.
Mithraism: Followers of the cult of Mithras, a Persian deity. Often seen as direct competitor to
Christianity.
Monasticism: Ascetic movement that first became prominent in the fourth century in Egypt and Syria
by which communities of individuals separated themselves from society and focused on the search for
God.
Monophysite: One who believes that Christ has one predominantly divine nature in which human
elements are subsumed.
Monotheism: The belief that there is only one God. Much early Christian theology was concerned
with defining the divinity of Christ without offending this belief.
Montanists: Followers of Montanus, a second-century prophet from Phrygia who claimed to be
speaking through the Holy Spirit.
Muratorian fragment: Named after the historian Father Ludovico Antonio Muratori, (16721750). It
is the oldest known list of the books of the New Testament, possibly dating from c.AD 200.
Nag Hammadi texts: An important collection of fourth-century codices containing earlier, mostly
second-century, texts, discovered in 1945. Their contents have invigorated the debate over
gnosticism.
Neoplatonism: The most developed form of Platonism as seen especially in the work of the great
(pagan) religious philosopher Plotinus (c.20570) whose terminology may have been adapted by the
Cappadocian Fathers in their definition of the Trinity.
Nestorianism: The belief, originating with Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, that Christ had two
natures, human and divine, which co-existed without mingling with each other (cf. monophysitism).
New Testament: The collection of twenty-seven canonical texts, including the gospels and letters of
Paul, recognised by the church as orthodox by the fourth century.
Nicaea: Site of the first ecumenical council, presided over by the emperor Constantine, 325. See
Nicene creed.
Nicene creed, Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed: The creed passed at the Council of Nicaea (AD
325) as amended at the Council of Constantinople (AD 381). Later became the authoritative creed of
the orthodox churches.
Novatianists: Followers of Novatian, a third-century Roman priest, who argued that those who had
lapsed under the pressure of persecution should not be readmitted to the church.
Old Testament: The books of the Hebrew scriptures as adopted by the Christian church, normally in
their Greek versions, the Septuagint.
Original sin: The sin of Adam believed to be passed on from generation to generation so as to infuse
all humanity. Elaborated by Augustine in the late fourth century.
Orthodox: Christian doctrine accepted by the mainstream Christian churches as representing correct
and authoritative belief. The eastern Orthodox churches are the heirs of the Christianity of the
Byzantine empire.
Ousios: Greek substance. Philosophical term of some complexity which was eventually accepted as
describing the shared being of the three members of the Trinity.
Pagan: Literally country dweller, but increasingly used by Christians as a derogatory term for all
those who remained unconverted to Christianity.
Paideia: A state of cultural and educational excellence, the goal of the traditional Greek education of
the elite.
Palestine: The Roman name given to the region between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan by
the second-century AD emperor Hadrian so as to obliterate the name of Israel after his defeat of a
Jewish revolt.
Papacy: The designation of the bishop of Rome as the senior bishop of the Christian church as
assumed successor of Peter in that role.
Parrhesia: The right to speak openly. An accepted convention in Greek society which was abolished
by the emperor Justinian in the 530s.
Passion: From the Latin suffering. The last week of Jesus life up to and including the crucifixion.
Passover: The pre-eminent Jewish festival that commemorates the Exodus from Egypt. The
Eucharistic meal may well have developed from the Passover feast. The three synoptic gospels link
Jesus death to the Passover.
Patriarch: Father of the nation. Originally used of Abraham and other Old Testament figures. In a
Christian context used of senior bishops, those of Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and, after 451,
Jerusalem.
Patristics: The study of the theology of the period of the church fathers, especially between AD 100
and 600.
Pelagian controversy: Important controversy over the place of free will in human nature, named
after the champion of free will, Pelagius. Resolved against Pelagius in favour of Augustine.
Pentecost: The Jewish festival held on the fiftieth day after Passover, the moment in Christian history
when the Holy Spirit was said to have descended on the apostles.
Pharisees: Small religious Jewish party, pervasive in Galilee during Jesus ministry, who challenged
many of his teachings on the grounds that they disregarded the letter of the Law.
Pilgrimage: A journey undertaken to a holy place, e.g. Jerusalem or Rome, in the hope of spiritual
enhancement or reward.
Predestination: In its extreme form, the idea that human beings are totally dependent on the grace of
God for salvation which cannot be predicted or necessarily achieved with good works. Leaves the
status of free will unresolved and contested, e.g. by Pelagius, for this reason.
Pre-existence: The belief that Jesus had an existence in heaven alongside God before he was
incarnated, an essential feature of orthodox Christian belief.
Presbyter: Originally a Jewish elder, a title adopted by the early Christian communities and later
synonymous with priest.
Prophecy: The proclamation of supernatural knowledge. The difficulty in distinguishing between true
and false prophets was a major challenge in the early church.
Q: A selection of Jesus early sayings believed to have been drawn from a common source by
Matthew and Luke.
Qumran: A small and reclusive Jewish community of the first century AD whose beliefs and
activities are represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Ravenna, Italy: Capital of the late Roman emperor Honorius and later the Ostrogoth Theodoric;
recaptured by the Byzantines in 540. Famous for its splendid church mosaics.
Relics: Conventionally used of the bones of martyrs and holy men but also of sacred objects such as
the True Cross which are venerated for themselves and their power to effect miracles.
Resurrection: The belief that Jesus rose from his grave three days after the crucifixion, in either a
physical or spiritual form.
Resurrection of the body: The belief, contested in the early church, that at the Last Judgement all
would regain their physical bodies (or, in Paul, a spiritual form of them).
Revelation: The truths about God which Christians believe that God himself has revealed.
Rome: Capital of the Roman empire and centre for many early Christian communities. By tradition its
first bishop was Peter although it was not until the fifth century (e.g. under Leo I) that the bishops
were effectively asserting their authority over the western Latin-speaking church.
Rule: A code of conduct developed for the good order of a monastic community. The most famous
Rule in the western church is that of St Benedict.
Sabellianism: After a third-century Roman priest, Sabellius. The belief that Jesus was a temporary
manifestation of God and never had a personality distinct from him.
Sacrament: Literally a mystery, but commonly applied to a sacred rite such as baptism or the
Eucharist instituted by Christ himself.
Sacrifice: The most common ritual in pagan and Jewish worship, usually involving the slaughter of
an animal. Christs sacrifice on the cross was seen as superseding all other forms of sacrifice and the
Christian emperors banned any other form of the ritual.
Sadducees: A grouping of aristocratic priests in first-century Judaism who were sympathetic to
Roman rule and antagonistic to Jesus and his teachings.
Sanhedrin: The Jewish council of seventy elders, presided over by the high priest, which had the
pre-eminent role in defining Jewish belief and its implementation through the Law.
Santa Sophia: The Holy Wisdom. Magnificent church in Constantinople, constructed in its first
form by Constantine but rebuilt in its present splendour by Justinian.
Sarcophagus: A stone coffin, often with a carved faade and sides. Christian sarcophagi provide
excellent evidence of the development of Christian art and iconography.
Schism: A split within the church, usually arising from irreconcilable differences over its institutional
form.
Second Sophistic: A revival of Greek learning notably in the second and third centuries AD which
created the philosophical background to which Christian theology related.
Septuagint: A Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures made in the third century BC (traditionally
by seventy-two scholars) to meet the needs of the Jews of the diaspora. Used by Paul and other early
Christians as an authoritative text despite its differences from the original Hebrew.
Sethianism: From Seth, the son of Adam and Eve, a second-century gnostic school which privileges
Seth as one who has received the pure spirit from above.
Soul: The immaterial part of a human being conceived by Plato as the seat of the rational intellect and
superior to the physical body. Absorbed into the Christian tradition in that the soul survives after
death and responds to pleasure or pain in heaven or hell.
Stoicism: An important philosophical system which taught the unity of all creation, its relentless
move through cycles and the need for perseverance in the unfolding of fate. Many Stoic beliefs were
attractive to educated Christians.
Subordinationism: The belief, widely held in the first centuries of Christianity, and supported by
gospel evidence, that Jesus was a subordinate figure to his Father.
Synagogue: Building used by Jews for prayer and the reading of scriptures, also used by early
Christians for the same purposes. Later the focus of hostility and even destruction by Christian
groups.
Synod: A small or localised meeting of bishops.
Synoptic: Seeing with a single eye, the traditional description of the gospels of Mark, Matthew and
Luke which share many of the same sources and perspectives.
Syriac: A branch of the Aramaic language in which many early Christian texts were written or
translated from the Greek. Syriac Christian literature is celebrated for its poetical renderings of
liturgy.
Theocracy: Government by God, usually through the medium of a favoured king or emperor who is
declared to be the chosen of God.
Theotokos: Bearer of God, the title used to define the status of the Virgin Mary from the fifth century
onwards.
Torah: See Law.
Trinity: The three central figures of Christian belief, Father, Son and Holy Spirit and the relationship
between them. While many early Christians saw them as a hierarchy, Son subordinate to Father and
Holy Spirit subordinate to both, the orthodox definition, held since 381, is that they are three distinct
personalities within a single Godhead.
Tritheism: The belief, heretical to orthodox Christians, that there are three distinct gods, rather than
one single Godhead, within the Trinity.
Virgin Birth: The belief that Jesus was conceived by Mary through the power of the Holy Spirit and
thus without a human father (and in some traditions that she remained a virgin even during the act of
birth). First recorded about AD 85 in the gospels of Luke and Matthew.
Vulgate: The Latin translation of the scriptures from the original Greek and Hebrew, largely the work
of Jerome, which became the authorised version for the Roman Catholic church.
People
The major figures of the Old Testament and Jewish history have not been covered here but can be
found in any standard dictionary of the Bible.
The following figures receive extensive treatment within individual chapters and the reader is
referred to these:
Augustine, bishop of Hippo: Chapter Twenty-eight.
Constantine: Chapter Twenty-two.
Cyprian, bishop of Carthage: Chapter Nineteen.
Jerome: Chapter Twenty-seven.
Jesus Christ: Chapters One and Two.
John, evangelist: Chapter Eight.
Luke, evangelist: Chapter Seven.
Mark, evangelist: Chapter Seven.
Matthew, evangelist: Chapter Seven.
Origen: Chapter Eighteen.
Paul, apostle: Chapter Five.
Tertullian, theologian in Carthage: Chapter Seventeen.

Alexander: Bishop of Alexandria, 31228, and believer in a Christ who had existed eternally, rather
than as a separate creation. He attempted to enforce his authority on the priest Arius and saw his
cause triumph at the Council of Nicaea.
Ambrose (c.339397): Formidable bishop of Milan and ardent supporter of the Nicene faith.
Attempted to enforce the authority of the church over that of the emperors.
Ammianus Marcellinus (c.330after 391): Important historian of his times, the best source for the
fourth-century empire even if his references to Christianity are few and dismissive.
Anthony (?251356): Hermit who was the subject of a famous hagiographical Life by Athanasius
which presented him as unlettered but orthodox. In reality he seems to have been a more sophisticated
thinker than Athanasius allowed.
Aristotle (384322 BC): Outstanding philosopher known for his work on logic and the empirical
sciences. His rigorous analysis and focus on the material world made him an object of suspicion to
early Christians.
Arius (died 336): Presbyter in Alexandria, vocal in his belief that Jesus was a later creation of the
Father. His name was used by his enemies to condemn all forms of subordinationism as Arianism
and hence heretical.
Athanasius (c.296373): Tempestuous bishop of Alexandria, champion of the Nicene creed and
scourge of his subordinationist rivals.
Barnabas: Early apostle and companion of Paul who appears to have travelled widely in the service
of the early church.
Basil (c.330379): Bishop of Caesarea (Cappadocia). Major intellectual, one of the Cappadocian
Fathers responsible for defining the terminology of the Trinity, but also an impressive administrator,
organiser of charity and founder of eastern monasticism.
Bede (c.673735): The foremost scholar of Anglo-Saxon England, although limited in his
perspectives by the constraints of his times. His Ecclesiastical History of the English People is
heavily biased towards the triumph of the Anglo-Saxons against the natives of the island.
Benedict (c.480550): Revered as the founder of western monasticism and the Benedictine order.
His Rule, of conduct for his monks, is respected for its moderation and good sense.
Bultmann, Rudolf (18841976): German New Testament scholar famous for his declaration that
Jesus can never be known as a historical figure, other than as one who was crucified for the salvation
of humanity.
Caiaphas: High priest between c.18 and 37, increasingly recognised as a supreme political operator
who successfully held his own in Jerusalem against his Roman overlords.
Cassian, John (c.360after 430): Having experienced life as a monk in Bethlehem, Cassian moved
to the west c.415 where he passed on his experience of monastic living in his Institutes and
Conferences, enormously influential guidelines for the early western monasteries.
Celsus: Author of a detailed and wide-ranging attack on Christianity of c. 180. Important for showing
the attitudes of educated Greeks to the emerging religion.
Clement of Alexandria (c.150c.215): Philosopher and Christian theologian who recognised the
contribution Greek philosophy could make to Christian doctrine.
Clement of Rome: Author of a famous letter to the Corinthians, c. 96, influential for its rationale of
church order and mention of a possible martyrdom of Peter and Paul in Rome.
Constantius: Son of Constantine, sole ruler of the empire 35161. Imposed a subordinationist creed
on the church at Constantinople in 360.
Cyril (died 444): Bishop of Alexandria and able theologian of monophysitism, notorious for his
aggressive behaviour to his pagan and theological opponents.
Diocletian: Roman emperor, 284305. Brilliant reorganiser of the Roman empire who reluctantly
acceded to demands that he persecute Christians in the final campaign against Christianity before
Constantines toleration.
Dioscorus: Bishop of Alexandria, 44451, and outspoken supporter of monophysitism, deposed after
his aggressive behaviour at the Council of Ephesus, 449.
Epiphanius (c.315403): Intemperate bishop of Salamis in Cyprus known for his obsession with
heresies which he detailed in his Panarion.
Eunomius (died 394): Important theologian who preserved the use of reason notably to argue that
Jesus the Son was distinctly different from and subordinate to God the Father. Condemned as
heretical by the supporters of Nicaea in 381.
Eusebius (c.260c.340): Bishop of Caesarea and important Christian intellectual of his period.
Ardent supporter of Constantine and author of the first full history of Christianity.
Eusebius (died c. 342): Bishop of Nicomedia who offered support to Arius and spoke on his behalf
at Nicaea in 325.
Evragius of Pontus (died 399): Important eastern ascetic who defined a path through which self-
discipline could lead to reconciliation with God.
Gregory (c.330c.395): Bishop of Nyssa and brilliant theologian, one of the Cappadocian Fathers,
the first-known Christian advocate of the abolition of slavery.
Gregory the Great: Impressive pope, 590604, who maintained the prestige and vigour of the
papacy at a time of economic and social breakdown in Europe.
Gregory of Nazianzus (c.329c.390): A fine theologian, one of the Cappadocian Fathers, known for
his sophisticated defence of the Nicene Trinity but less successful in his short term as bishop of
Constantinople.
Gregory the Wonderworker (c.213c.270): Pupil of Origen, and whom tradition (uncorroborated)
credits with many miracles and the conversion of the pagan population of Neocaesarea in Pontus.
Hadrian: Roman emperor, 11738, who maintained the stability of the empire and inspired the
confidence of the Greeks in their own culture. Brutally suppressed a Jewish revolt in AD 135 but was
reluctant to persecute Christians.
Harnack, Adolf von (18511930): Controversial German theologian who argued that Christian
theology had been unduly influenced by Greek philosophy and that the moral claims of Christianity
outweighed its doctrinal beliefs.
Helena: Mother of the emperor Constantine, who was credited with finding the True Cross on her
pilgrimage to Palestine in the 320s.
Herod Antipas: Ruler of Galilee, 4 BCAD 39, as a client king of the Romans, during the time of
Jesus ministry in the region.
Herod the Great: Ruled an extensive kingdom based on Judaea, on behalf of the Romans between
37 and 4 BC. An Idumaean and hence an outsider to the majority Jewish population; brutal but
effective. Rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem.
Hilary (c.315c.367): Bishop of Poitiers and the first western theologian to mount a defence of the
Nicene Trinity against subordinationism.
Hypatia (c.375415): Respected pagan philosopher in Alexandria, put to death by a Christian mob in
415.
Ignatius (c.35c.107): Bishop of Antioch, martyred in Rome. His letters to seven Christian
communities are important in defining the role of the bishop.
Irenaeus (c.130c.200): Bishop of Lyons, important for defining the church as an institution based on
apostolic succession which must defend itself against heretics. The first advocate of four, and only
four, canonical gospels.
James: Reputed brother of Jesus, who assumed leadership of the Christian community in Jerusalem
after Peter left the city until his martyrdom in 62.
John the Baptist: A missionary preacher, responsible for the baptism of Christ. Executed by Herod
Antipas.
John Chrysostom, the golden mouthed (c.347407): Brilliant if often vituperative speaker.
Bishop of Constantinople, 397404, his intransigent personality led to his deposition and exile.
John Philoponus (c.490c.570): Philosopher working in Alexandria whose attempt to use
Aristotelian logic to define the Trinity led to him being declared heretical in the seventh century. His
thoughtful critques of Aristotle were revived during the Renaissance.
Josephus (c.37c.100): Important Jewish historian who provided extensive background evidence for
the history and culture of the Jews in the first century AD.
Julian: Emperor, 3613. A lapsed Christian, the last of the pagan emperors, responsible for the
critique Against the Galileans and a failed attempt to restore the diversity of pagan worship.
Julian (c.386454): Bishop of Eclanum (Italy). Important and broad-minded opponent of Augustine
on the question of free will whose views were eventually condemned.
Justin Martyr (c.100165): Christian apologist, well known for his Dialogue with Trypho which
explores the differences between Christian and Jewish belief. Martyred in Rome in the reign of
Marcus Aurelius.
Justinian: Byzantine emperor, 52765, and the last great figure of antiquity. Determined to create a
united Christian state based on the reconquest of the western empire and the resolution of doctrinal
controversy with the monophysites. Worked hard to eradicate paganism. Achieved only limited
success in these aims.
Lactantius (c.250c.325): Apologist for Christianity who advocated toleration for all faiths.
Responsible for a lurid account of the punishments inflicted by God on those who persecuted
Christians. Appointed by Constantine as tutor for his son.
Leo I, the Great: Pope, 44061. Impressive bishop of Rome whose forceful personality did much
to increase papal authority. His Tome (letter) on the natures of Christ helped define doctrine on the
issue in both eastern and western churches.
Macrina (died 380): Saintly sister of Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa and the subject of an
influential Life by the latter which did much to publicise the virtues of ascetic life for women.
Marcian: Byzantine emperor (45057) who played a major part in defining and enforcing the
Chalcedonian formula on the human nature of Christ.
Marcion (died 160): Champion of Paul who challenged the status of the Old Testament God and
wished to disown the Hebrew scriptures for this reason. Declared heretical but retained immense
influence.
Marcus Aurelius: Emperor, 16180. Doughty defender of the empires borders and traditional
values, which involved sporadic persecution of Christians. Famous for his Stoic Meditations.
Martin (died 397): Bishop of Tours. Former soldier, then monk who retained his ascetic lifestyle
when he became bishop. Celebrated for his miracles and, later, for those effected by his bones.
Mary, mother of God (i.e. Jesus the Son as God): Although little is said of Mary in the gospels, her
status rose steadily in the early Christian centuries (see Theotokos). She was said to be perpetually
virgin and her life is recounted in many legends.
Mary Magdalene: An early follower of Jesus who witnessed his death and a resurrection
appearance. She is given a major role in some gnostic writings.
Melania the Elder and Younger: Early fifth century, the latter granddaughter of the former. Noted
ascetics who freely spread their wealth among churches and monasteries.
Melito (died c. 190): Bishop of Sardis and author of a polemic against the Jews in the form of a
Paschal hymn.
Nectarius (died 397): A senator consecrated bishop of Constantinople in 381 in the hope of calming
unrest over the imposition of the Nicene creed.
Nestorius (died c. 451): Bishop of Constantinople who taught that Christ had two separate natures,
human and divine. Condemned as heretical but his views were close to those later declared orthodox
at the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
Ossius (or Hosius) (c.256357): Bishop of Cordoba, ecclesiastical adviser to Constantine before
and during the Council of Nicaea.
Pachomius (c.290346): Founder and effective organiser of a number of early monasteries in the
Egyptian desert.
Paulinus of Nola (c.354431): Aristocratic bishop who renounced his wealth and devoted his later
life to the shrine of St Felix at Nola.
Pelagius (late fourth/early fifth centuries): Important defender of free will and the essential
goodness of God against Augustines more forbidding teachings. Eventually declared heretical.
Perpetua: The first Christian woman whose voice survives in her account of the events leading to
her martyrdom at Carthage in 203.
Peter: Leader of the apostles and recognised as such by Jesus. Traditionally said to have been the
first bishop of Rome.
Philo (c.20 BCc.AD 50): Important Jewish philosopher who integrated Greek philosophical concepts
into Jewish belief and was a major influence on Christian theology.
Plato (427347 BC): Greek philosopher whose concentration on the understanding of the realities
of the immaterial world and enduring influence into the early Christian centuries were of immense
importance in the formation of Christian theology.
Plotinus (c.20570): Religious philosopher (pagan) whose work displays an understanding of
mysticism without sacrificing reason. Arguably the finest spiritual thinker of these centuries.
Polycarp (died 155 or possibly later): Staunch member of the early Asian Christian community
whose early life may have overlapped with the longer-living apostles and revered by Irenaeus as
such. Martyred in extreme old age.
Pontius Pilate: Roman prefect of Judaea, AD 2636, responsible for ordering the crucifixion of
Jesus.
Pseudo-Dionysius (c.500): The name given to the author of a series of enormously influential works
of Christian mysticism which talk of the impossibility of expressing knowledge of God.
Simon Magus: First-century spiritual leader from Samaria condemned by Peter and later regarded as
the father of all heresies.
Socrates (c.469399 BC): Important Greek philosopher whose search for the ultimate meaning of
things is recorded or developed by his admirer Plato.
Socrates (c.380450): Native of Constantinople, writer of a clear and well-organised church history
of the fourth and early fifth centuries.
Sozomen: Early fifth-century historian of the church, often used as supplementary to Socrates.
Stephen: The first Christian martyr, c. 35. Reputedly stoned after he had given eloquent expression to
his Christian belief before the Sanhedrin.
Themistius (c.317c.387): Important pagan court orator whose experience of warring Christian
factions impelled him to speak in favour of religious toleration.
Theodoret (c.393460): A native of Antioch and supporter of Nestorius, remembered for his church
history which recasts events as the unfolding of the will of God in history.
Theodoric (c.453526): King of the Ostrogoths. An Arian whose sympathy for classical
civilisation and tolerance of the Catholic majority in his kingdom earned him respect.
Theodosius I: Emperor, 37995. One of the most important Christian emperors. Used the law to
enforce the Nicene Trinity as the only acceptable form of the Trinity and initiated a sweeping
campaign against paganism.
Theodosius II: Emperor, 40850. A pious ruler who, however, failed to resolve the doctrinal
disputes over the nature of Christ which consumed the church in these years.
Tiberius: Emperor, AD 1437. Maintained the stability of the empire established by his predecessor,
Augustus.
Timothy: Intimate friend and right-hand man of the apostle Paul. By tradition the first bishop of
Ephesus.
Titus (3981): Emperor, 7981. Brought the Jewish revolt of 6670 to a bloody end with the
destruction of the Temple.
Trajan: Emperor, 98117. One of the finest Roman emperors, known in a Christian context for his
letters to Pliny, the governor of Bithynia, concerning the appropriate treatment of Christians.
Ulfilas (c.31183): Important Christian missionary to the Goths and the translator of the Bible into
Gothic. Condemned as heretical for his subordinationism but his conversions proved enduring.
Valentinus (second century): Intellectual Egyptian Christian who moved to Rome, c. 140, where he
established a popular following. His individual teachings were seen by his opponents, probably
unfairly, as gnostic.
Vermes, Geza (born 1924): Hungarian-born scholar, later at Oxford University, who is known for
his work on Jesus Judaism and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Vigilius: (Pope, 53753). A weak pope who allowed himself to be manipulated by the emperor
Justinian in the controversy over monophysitism, to the fury of his fellow bishops in the west.
 Further Reading
This is a selective list designed to help the reader on to the next stage of study.
Original Sources
The Bible is, of course, available in many translations. Almost every early Christian text mentioned
in this book will be found in the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, ccel.org, or the new Advent
collection, newadvent.com.
Bart Ehrman, Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New Testament, Oxford and
New York, 2003 includes the texts of many of the apocryphal Acts of Apostles and gospels.
Eusebius History of the Church is available in a translation by G.A. Williamson in Penguin
Classics.
Eusebius Life of Constantine, translation and commentary by Averil Cameron and Stuart Hall,
Oxford, 1999
Works by Augustine, The Confessions, The City of God, etc., are also available in Penguin Classics.
The following readers provide a great deal of original source material:
Bart Ehrman and Andrew Jacobs (eds) Christianity in Late Antiquity, 300450 CE: A Reader,
New York and Oxford, 2004
A.D. Lee, Pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity: A Sourcebook, London and New York, 2000
Michael Maas, Readings in Late Antiquity: A Sourcebook, London and New York, 2000
General Histories
Henry Chadwick, The Early Church, London and New York, 1967, has held its own for forty years.
Still an excellent introduction. I particularly like Philip Esler (ed.), The Early Christian World,
London and New York, 2000, two volumes of essays on themes and personalities in early
Christian history. It is very good for introductions to the early church fathers. There are interesting
essays in A Peoples History of Christianity, volume 1, Christian Origins (ed. Richard Horsley)
and volume 2, Late Ancient Christianity (ed. Virginia Burrus), both Minneapolis, MN, 2005.
Peter Browns survey, The Rise of Western Christendom, second edition, Oxford, 2003, takes the
story only from AD 200 but is a beautifully written survey. Judith Herrin, The Formation of
Christendom, London, 1987, another acclaimed history, concentrates more on the east from the
fifth to sixth centuries onwards.

For the Bible in general: Karen Armstrong, The Bible: The Biography, London, 2007; Jaroslav
Pelikan, Whose Bible Is It?: A History of the Scriptures through the Ages, London and New York,
2005. Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, New
York, 2005 is interesting, although less provocative than the title suggests. More detailed work and
references to the individual books of the Bible and the key figures of the Old Testament can be found
in Bruce Metzger and Michael Coogan (eds), The Oxford Companion to the Bible, Oxford and New
York, 1993.
Jesus. There is a vast range of studies. As a historical introduction, E.P. Sanders, The Historical
Figure of Jesus, London, 1993 is reliable. Geza Vermes has explored the Jewishness of Jesus in a
number of important studies including Jesus the Jew, London, 1973, The Changing Faces of Jesus,
London and New York, 2000 and The Authentic Gospel of Jesus, London and New York, 2003. See
also his The Nativity, London and New York, 2006, The Passion, London and New York, 2005 and
The Resurrection, London and New York, 2008, all of which approach the issue from a historical
point of view. Also recommended: Paula Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ, second edition, New
Haven, CN, and London, 2000, her Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, London, 2000 and Bart
Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, Oxford 1999.
James Dunn, Jesus Remembered, Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, 2003 is a large volume (one
of a proposed three) which contains an in-depth study of the problems of finding the historical Jesus.
Leslie Houlden (ed.), Jesus in History, Thought and Culture, Oxford and Santa Barbara, CA, 2003
and D. Ford and M. Higton (eds), Jesus in the Oxford Readers series, Oxford, 2002, provide good
material on the changing ways Jesus has been seen over the centuries.
Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity, Grand Rapids, MI
and Cambridge, 2003, is outstanding in showing how Jesus evolved into Christ. His views are
expressed in shorter introductions: How on Earth Did Jesus Become God?, Grand Rapids, MI and
Cambridge, 2002 and At the Origins of Christian Worship, Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, 2000.

Judaism is well covered in a general history by Martin Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash
of Ancient Civilizations, London and New York, 2007 and Christopher Rowland, Christian Origins,
second edition, London, 2002. Philip Davies, George Brooke and Phillip Callaway, The Complete
World of the Dead Sea Scrolls, London, 2002, is a useful introduction.

New Testament. An excellent starting point is Raymond Brown, An Introduction to the New
Testament, New York and London, 1997. It covers each work in a detailed and readable commentary.

Paul has a strong psychological hold on his adherents and many Lives and studies are personal and
even idiosyncratic. Jerome Murphy-OConnor, Paul: A Critical Life, Oxford, 1996, or the more
concise Paul: His Story, Oxford, 2004, are an acknowledged authoritys survey of the known facts.
E.P. Sanders, Paul in the Past Masters series, Oxford, 1991, is a good introduction to the theology.
For a good selection of recent scholarship on Paul and his theology, see James Dunn (ed.), The
Cambridge Companion to St Paul, Cambridge, 2003.

Philo. Kenneth Schenck, A Brief Guide to Philo, Louisville, KY, 2005

Second and Third Centuries
The sources are very scattered and it is difficult to make much coherent sense of them but the
following deal with the main themes of Part Two of this book:

Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, Cambridge, 1998, provides essential
background.
Geoffrey Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome, Cambridge, 1995. Bowersocks argument that Christian
 martyrdom owed nothing to Jewish precedents is disputed but this is a good introduction.
Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity, Philadelphia, PA, 2004.
Brilliant challenge to the thesis that Christianity and Judaism had separated by the second century.
Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity,
London and New York, 1988. Part One deals with the second and third centuries. A classic study
of ascetic texts from this period.
Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition: Studies in Justin, Clement,
and Origen, New York and Oxford, 1966
H. Crouzel, Origen: The Life and Thought of the First Great Theologian, translation by A.S.
Worrall, Edinburgh, 1989
Bart Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, Oxford
and New York, 2003. Good study of the emergence of an orthodox church from among the
alternatives.
Anthony Grafton and Megan Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book, Cambridge,
MA and London, 2006. Deals with Origen and Eusebius in the context of the library at Caesarea.
Peter Hinchcliff, Cyprian of Carthage and the Unity of the Christian Church, London, 1974
Keith Hopkins, A World Full of Gods: Pagans, Jews and Christians in the Roman Empire, London,
1999. Lively and imaginative study of these centuries.
Karen King, What is Gnosticism?, Cambridge, MA and London, 2003
Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries,
Minneapolis, MN, 2003. Absorbing study of what is known about early Christian Rome.
Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, London, 1986. A famous study which still contains a vast
amount of material not available elsewhere.
Judith Lieu, Neither Jew Nor Greek, Edinburgh, 2005. Essays on the problems of understanding the
relationship between Christians and Jews in these centuries.
Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (AD 100400), New Haven, CN, and London,
1984
Marvin Meyer, The Gnostic Discoveries, San Francisco, 2005
Eric Osborn has provided a series of biographies of theologians from these centuries: Tertullian,
First Theologian of the West, Cambridge, 1997; Irenaeus of Lyons, Cambridge, 2001; Clement
of Alexandria, Cambridge, 2005.
James Rives, Religion and Authority in Roman Carthage, Oxford and New York, 1995, deals with
Cyprian.
M.A. Williams, Rethinking Gnosticism: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category,
Princeton, NJ, 2006
AD 313600
There is a wealth of material dealing with Part Three of this book and the following is only a
selection.
General Background
G.W. Bowersock, Peter Brown and Oleg Grabar, Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical
World, Cambridge, MA and London, 1999
Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, London, 1971. Brilliant study which excited considerable
interest in this period.
Averil Cameron, The Later Roman Empire, AD 284430, London, 1993 and The Mediterranean
World in Late Antiquity, London and New York, 1993. Standard introductions to the period.
Peter Garnsey and Caroline Humfress, The Evolution of the Late Antique World, Cambridge, 2001.
Perceptive essays.
Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History, London, 2005. Lively narrative
history of the period.
Cyril Mango (ed.), The Oxford History of Byzantium, Oxford and New York, 2002. Good
introduction to the emergence of the empire.
Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, Oxford, 2005. Excellent on the
archaeological evidence for the collapse of Rome in the west.
General Books Dealing with Christian Issues in these Centuries
Peter Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire, Hanover and London, 2001.
Good on Roman and Christian attitudes to poverty.
Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, Berkeley, CA, and London, 1991.
Excellent study of how Christians transformed the way in which their world was described.
Henry Chadwick, East and West: The Making of a Rift in the Church, Oxford and New York, 2003.
Discusses the important theme of how the churches divided from the earliest times.
Pierre Chuvin, A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, translated by B.A. Archer, Cambridge, MA and
London, 1990
Gillian Clark, Christianity and Roman Society, Cambridge, 2004
Charles Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason,
London, 2002; New York, 2004
Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries, New Haven, CN
and London, 1997
Ramsay MacMullen, Voting about God in Early Church Councils, New Haven, CN, and London,
2006
R.A. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, Cambridge, 1990. Discusses the changes in
Christianity between the fourth and sixth centuries.
Michele Rene Salzman, The Making of a Christian Aristocracy: Social and Religious Change in
 the Western Roman Empire, Cambridge, MA and London, 2002. Looks at the conversion of the
western aristocracy to Christianity.
Eberhard Sauer, The Archaeology of Religious Hatred, Stroud, 2003. Reviews the archaeological
evidence for Christian destruction of pagan art and architecture.
Asceticism and Monasticism
Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages,
Oxford, 2000
Philip Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian, Oxford,
1978
Philip Rousseau, Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-century Egypt, Berkeley, CA,
and London, 1985
V. Wimbush and R. Valantasis (eds), Asceticism, Oxford and New York, 2002
Bishops
Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity, Madison, WI, 1992
Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity, Berkeley, CA, and London, 2005
Christian Art
Dominic Janes, God and Gold in Late Antiquity, Cambridge, 1998. Important study of how the
church became reconciled with opulence in art.
Robin Margaret Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art, London and New York, 2000
Jeffrey Spier (ed.), Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art, New Haven, CN, and London,
2007
Christian Emperors
Sabine MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity, Berkeley, CA, and London, 1981, is an
excellent introduction to the way that emperors displayed themselves in this period.
Constantine. H.A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance, Baltimore,
MD, and London, 2000
Noel Lenski (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine, Cambridge, 2006 Hans
Pohlsander, The Emperor Constantine, London and New York, 1996

Theodosius I. Charles Freeman, AD 381: Heretics, Pagans and the Coming of the Christian State,
London, 2008. Deals with the imposition of the Nicene Trinity by Theodosius.
Gerard Friell and Stephen Williams, Theodosius: The Empire at Bay, New Haven, CN, and London,
1994
N. King, The Emperor Theodosius and the Establishment of Christianity, London, 1961

Theodosius II. Fergus Millar, A Greek Roman Empire: Power and Belief under Theodosius II, 408
 450, Berkeley, CA, and London, 2007

Justinian. M. Maas (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, Cambridge, 2005
John Moorhead, Justinian, London, 1994
Philosophy and Theology
P. Athanassiadi and M. Frede (eds), Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity, Oxford and New York,
1999. Shows how pagans as well as Christians were developing monotheistic religions.
Jan Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife, London and New York, 2002
Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, New York, 1995
Leo Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils, 325787: Their History and Theology,
Collegeville, MN, 1990
Richard Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, Edinburgh, 1988, is essential for the
Nicene debates.
Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition: 100600, Chicago, 1977. Classic study.
Jaroslav Pelikan, Credo, New Haven, CN, and London, 2003. Thorough introduction to the creeds
across the centuries.
H. Gregory Snyder, Teachers and Texts in the Ancient World: Philosophers, Jews and Christians,
London and New York, 2000. Excellent study of how Christian teachers existed alongside pagan
philosophical traditions.
Christopher Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity, Cambridge, 1994. Looks at the development
of Christian theology from a philosophical perspective.
Frances Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon, London, 1983. Good survey of theological developments
between 325 and 451.
Religious Leaders
Ambrose. Neil McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital, Berkeley,
CA, and London, 1994
Arius. Rowan Williams, Arius, second edition, London, 2001
Augustine. The famous biography is by Peter Brown, updated edition, Berkeley, CA, and London,
2002, but Serge Lancel, St Augustine, English translation by Antonia Nevill, London, 2002, is
also good. Studies in Augustines theology are Carol Harrison, Augustine: Christian Truth and
Fractured Humanity, Oxford and New York, 2000, and John Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought
Baptized, Cambridge, 1994
Basil of Caesarea. Philip Rousseau, Basil of Caesarea, Berkeley, CA, and London, 1998
Eunomius. Richard Vaggione, Eunomius of Cyzicus and the Nicene Revolution, Oxford, 2000
Gregory the Great. Robert Markus, Gregory the Great and his World, Cambridge, 1997
Gregory of Nazianzus. John McGuckin, St Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography, New
 York, 2001; Rosemary Radford Ruether, Gregory of Nazianzus: Rhetor and Philosopher,
Oxford, 1969
Jerome. J.N.D. Kelly, Jerome, London, 1975
John Chrysostom. J.N.D. Kelly, Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom, London, 1995
Paulinus of Nola. Dennis Trout, Paulinus of Nola, Berkeley, CA, and London, 1999
Advanced Reading with extensive booklists
J.W. Rogerson and Judith Lieu (eds), The Oxford Handbook to Biblical Studies, Oxford, 2006
S.A. Harvey and D. Hunter (eds), The Oxford Handbook to Early Christian Studies, Oxford, 2008
M. Mitchell and Frances Young (eds), The Cambridge History of Christianity, volume 1,
Cambridge, 2006
A. Casiday and F.W. Norris (eds), The Cambridge History of Christianity, volume 2, Constantine to
c. 600, Cambridge, 2007
Timeline
 Index
Texts are under the names of their assumed writers, e.g. Luke, gospel of. See also the Glossary (pp.
33752) for additional definitions of selected themes, places and people.

Abelard 324
Abraham 9, 91
Acts of the Apostles 40, 48, 64
Adam 158, 278, 289
Christ as second Adam 159
disobedience of 1589, 2889
Adrianople, battle of 248, 254
Adversus haereses, see Irenaeus
Adversus Judaeos, tradition 57, 141, 235, 265
Afterlife, see Eschatology
Akhenaten, Egyptian pharaoh 257
Alcinous, The Handbook of Platonism 177
Alexander, bishop of Alexandria 230, 231, 232
Alexandria 183, 1867, 217
Jewish community in 17, 1867, 266
sacking of Serapeion 258, 2656, 299
violence in 265, 306 see also Athanasius
Cyril
Theophilus
Allegory, see Scripture, interpretation of
Ambrose, bishop of Milan 243, 2545, 256, 266, 267, 269, 287
as builder 263
De fide 253
funeral oration for Theodosius 2589
relationship with Theodosius 2546
and relics 214
on virginity 277
Ammianus Marcellinus, historian 244, 261
Angels 14, 183
Annas, former high priest 5, 6
Anthony, hermit 242, 276
Antioch (Syria) 45, 217, 264
Golden Octagon 236, 263
Antoninus Pius, Roman emperor 127
Apocalypse, apocalypticism 15, 94 see also Jesus
Revelation, Book of
Apocryphal texts 128
Apollos 59, 65, 66, 67
Apophatism 68, 321
Apostles 40, 221
Apostolic succession 115, 1534, 156, 159, 200, 221, 31516, 325
Aquila, follower of Paul 568
Aquileia 219, 254, 271
Aramaic 21, 38
Arcadius, son of Theodosius I, 254, 258, 266, 298, 299
Arian Christianity 293, 307, 308
Arianism and Arian debates 2304,
Chapter Twenty-three passim, 307
Arian response to Theodosius laws 24952 see also Subordinationism
Aristotle 178, 180, 181, 287, 31011, 320
Categories 178
Arius 2304
Armenia 131, 306
Art, Christian 16970, 2713
catacomb art 16970
at Dura-Europus 132
Good Shepherd 170, 2723
Jonah 170, 271
at Nola 2623
orant 170
in San Antonio, Ferrara 153
on sarcophagi 16970
Asceticism 241, 262,
Chapter Twenty-seven passim askesis, definition of, 2745
Jerome on 27680
Marcion on 134
Tertullian on 199
Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria 97, 231, 234, 242, 245, 310
and attitude to Greek philosophy 242, 245
and creation of Arian heresy 243
Life of Anthony 242, 276, 277
Athens 556
Augustine 130, 176, 259, Chapter Twenty-eight passim, 323
attitude to poor 268
The City of God 289, 2934, 295, 319
Confessions 287, 288, 290, 291
De doctrina christiana 291
on faith 2901, 292
and filioque 2923
and free will 28990, 2947
on God 289, 2923
legacy 285, 297
on miracles 319
and Paul 61, 65, 287, 288, 293
persecution, rationale of 31315
as philosopher 2858, 290
philosophy of mind 286, 293
political philosophy 2934
on resurrection of the body 295
Soliloquies 287
The Trinity 2913 see also Original sin
Ault, James, Spirit and Flesh 11112

Baidaisan, Christian philosopher 216

Baptism 423, 114, 166, 184, 221, 271, 289 see also Rebaptism
Barnabas, companion of Paul 51, 523
Barnabas, Epistle of 13940
Barth, Karl 23
Basil of Caesarea 245, 246, 270, 275, 323
and monasticism 2812
New City 264
On the Holy Spirit 246, 250
Basilides 182
Bauckham, Richard
on Book of Revelation 107
on eyewitness accounts of Jesus 22
Bauer, Walter 146
Bede 313, 318, 320
library 319
Belisarius, general 308, 316
Beloved Disciple (John) 88, 934
Benedict, St 318
Bernard of Clairvaux 323
Bethlehem 278, 280, 281, 328 n.10
Church of the Nativity 272
Bethsaida 22
Bishops 116, 1878, 200, 204, 220, 222, 228,
Chapter Twenty-six passim
and Constantine 2301, 234, 236
of Constantinople, powers of 3045
Cyprian on 201, 202
elections, violence of 266
as judges 2678
metropolitan 204, 213, 235
and poor 2289
in Rome 160, 2034
Blandina, martyr 206, 207, 209
Blesilla 277
Boethius 316, 335, Chapter Thirty-one n. 5
Braudel, Fernand 123
Bultmann, Rudolf 23
Byzantine empire 298
Byzantine ruler, concept of 237, 3067

Caecilianists 229
Caelestius, supporter of Pelagius 295
Caesarea (Cappadocia) 264
Caesarea (Judaea) 3, 4, 187, 217
Caiaphas, high priest 5, 67, 324, 92
Canon (of scriptures) 979, 103, 105, 1356, 1467, 156, 160
Cappadocian Fathers 245
theological achievement 246
Carthage 196, 219 see also under Councils
Cassian, monk 274
Cassiodorus 316, 335, Chapter Thirty-one n. 5
Catacombs 169, 215, 219
Catechumens 131, 166
Catholic church 308, 313, 314, 318, 335, Chapter Thirty-one n.1
Cato 206
Celsus 217
On the True Doctrine 128, 1715
Origens critique of 194
Chalcedonian formula 304, 306, 310, 316
Christian, first use of 30
Christianity, as religious movement
in Anatolia 1301, 218
archaeological evidence for 55, 1301, 215, 218, 220, 308
in Bithynia and Pontus 1257
as counterculture 60, 128, 174,
Chapter Fifteen passim, 221
early church communities 406, 69, 99, 1002, 105,
Chapter Ten passim, 117, 2201
in Egypt 213, 218
 and Gentiles 456, 53
Johns community 87
Latin Christianity 196, 219, 317, 318
in Lyons, Gaul 157, 220
Matthews community 789
medieval 315, 317, 320, 314
and paganism 130
relationship with Judaism 401, 53, 91, 117,
Chapter Twelve passim, 157, 167
social structure 57, 117, 166, 175, 197, 220
in Spain 220
spread outside empire 131
spread within empire 44, 45, 63,
Chapter Five passim, 88, 125, 132, 157, Chapter Twenty-one passim
Syriac Christianity 131 see also Emperors
Christianity, as way of life
in daily life Chapter Fifteen passim
infanticide 165, 221
marriage in 164
poor, attitude to 264, 2689, 316
sex, attitudes to 11718, 164, 167, 185, 199, 221
women in 60, 99, 104, 11718, 1289, 155, 1645, 172, 199 see also Ethics, Christian
virginity
Christos, Christ xv, 42, 112 See also Jesus
Messiah Chrysippus 179
Church
authority of 290
concept of 5960 (Paul), 99, 100, 114, 116,
Chapter Fourteen passim, 202
Donatist conception of 31314
emergence of imperial church 299,
Chapter Twenty-four passim, 320
institutionalisation of 1978, 202, 2212 see also Bishops
 Orthodoxy
laxity of 172, 1878, 21112, 217
medieval 314, 315, 317, 320
versus state 256, 259, 320
Church buildings, 218, 219, 2356, 2634
baptisteries 2712
basilicas 235, 271
at Dura-Europus 132, 169
mausolea 271
opulence of 107, 236, 269
opposition to 272, 274 see also under Constantinople
Jerusalem
Ravenna
Rome
Church fathers, authority of 310
Cicero 177, 284. 286
Circumcision 11, 44
spiritual 63, 100, 139
Paul and 50, 53, 54, 55, 63
of Timothy 54
Clement of Alexandria 16970, 1835, 262
Paedagogus 184
Stromateis (Patchwork) 1834, 210
Clement, Letter of 634, 98, 11516
Clergy, freedom from taxation 228
Constantine, Roman emperor Chapter Twenty-two passim, 267, 268
as church builder 2356
conversion of 227
at Council of Nicaea 2314
Oration to the Saints 228
personality of 226, 22930, 237
Constantinople 2367, 246, 247, 248
Holy Apostles, church of 237, 249
 Santa Sophia, church of 237, 272, 309
as second Rome 250, 298, 301, 3045, 31516 see also under Councils
Constantius, father of Constantine 326
Constantius, son of Constantine 241
Conversion 4950 (Paul), 128, 12930, 131, 225, 320
Coptic 146, 218, 306
Corinth 567
Corinthians and letter from Clement, 11516 see also under Paul
Cornelius, bishop of Rome 203
Councils
Carthage
Cyprians 202, 203
Donatist 314
Chalcedon (451) 250, 3035
Constantinople (360) 241
Constantinople (381) 238, 24951, 259
Constantinople (383) 252
Constantinople (553) 30910
ecumenical 231, 317
Elvira 167,169, 220, 221
Ephesus (431), 3012
Ephesus (449) 303
Nicaea (325) 2313
Nicaea (787) 311
Quinisext 307
Rome 219
Sirmium 240
Covenant 140
New 70, 159, 273
Old 10, 70
Creation 1812
ex nihilo 182, 198
Origen and 1912
Creed 156, 166, 189, 198
Apostles 331, Chapter Fifteen passim, n.4
Dated 241
Nicene 2334, 238, 253
championed by Athanasius 2423
as revised at Constantinople (381) 2501
Crispina, martyr 212
Crucifixion 5, 31
depiction of 273
theological interpretation of 29, 501, 104, 118, 135, 140
in gnosticism 145, 149
Curiales 238
Cyprian, bishop of Carthage 2004, 211, 219, 221, 314
De unitate 202, 204
on bishops 201, 202
Life 200
martyred 209
on martyrdom 207
and unity of the church 202
Cyril, bishop of Alexandria 2667, 269, 300, 3012

Damasus, bishop of Rome 266, 277, 280, 315

Daniel, Book of 28, 107
David, king of Israel 9
Dead Sea Scrolls 13, 14, 26, 43, 89
Decius, Roman emperor 21011
Definition of Faith (Chalcedonian formula) 304, 316
Demiurge 135, 1812
Demophilus, bishop of Constantinople 246, 248, 249, 252
Deserts
and asceticism 2756
Devil(s) 131, 199, 276 see also Satan
Dialogue with Trypho the Jew (Justin Martyr) 1369
Diaspora see under Judaism
Diatessaron see Tatian
Didache 112, 11314, 155
Diocletian, Roman emperor 212
Dioscorus, bishop of Alexandria 3023, 306
Docetism 94, 135, 149
Donatism 229, 261, 288, 307, 31315
Dura-Europus 132, 211

Easter, date of 231, 235

Ebionites 133, 157
Edessa 216, 221
destruction of temple in 255
Edict of Toleration (Milan) 227
Egeria, pilgrim 280
Egypt, Christianity in 213, 218, 258 see also Alexandria
Elijah 1415, 34
Elvira, Council of 167, 169
Emperors and relationship to church
Constantine Chapter Twenty-two passim
Constantius 2412
Justinian 30710
Theodosius I 238, 247, Chapters Twenty-four and Twenty-five passim
Theodosius II 3003
Ephesus 58
Ephraim of Edessa 216
Epicurus, Epicureans 181
Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis 277, 283
Epistle to Diognetus 163
Eschatology (the end times) 142, 207, 323
in Judaism 1516 see also Heaven
Hell
Last Judgement
Essenes 1314, 1516
Ethics
 Aristotle 178
Jewish 1112
Judaeo-Christian 71, 801, 85, 95, 99106 passim, 11415, 118, 164, 165
Pauline 54, 5960, 118
Ethiopian church and New Testament canon 98
Eucharist 43, 59, 91, 114, 1667, 207, 221
Eudoxia, wife of Arcadius 299
Eugenius, usurper 2589
Eugenius of Laodicea 263
Eunomius 2456, 247, 249, 321
Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, church historian, 208, 214, 215, 217, 220, 258, 293, 318
and Arian controversy 2313
on Constantines achievement 237
on Constantines conversion 227
on conversion 128
at Council of Nicaea 232, 233
History of the Church 98, 128, 208, 215, 227
on laxity of the church 217
on New Testament canon 98
Oration to Constantine 237, 253
on persecution 2089, 213
on Philo 68
on toleration of Constantine 225
Eusebius of Nicomedia 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 240
Eustochium 2778, 284
Eve 158, 244, 278, 279
Evragius of Pontus, writer on asceticism 275
Excommunication 1678, 201
Exegesis, see Scripture, interpretation of
Ezekiel, Book of, quoted 279

Faith 156, 1756, 180, 184, 198, 3234

articles of 25, 290
in Hebrews 701
 in Letter of James 106 see also Augustine
Felicity 205
Felix, shrine of at Nola 2623, 273
Filioque 2923
First Apology (Justin Martyr) 35, 137, 1667
Flavian, bishop of Constantinople 302, 303
Flavius Rufinus, civil servant 256, 257
Free will 28990, 2947
Frigidus, battle of 2589, 318

Galen 124, 268

Galerius, Roman emperor 212, 226
Galilee 6, 19
Greek culture in 18, 22
Galla Placidia 303
Gallia Placidia 273
Genesis, Book of 150, 1812, 293
Germanicus, martyr 208
Gibbon, Edward 124
Gnosticism Chapter Thirteen passim, 184
definition 145
God 181,
Chapter Twenty-three passim, 259
Augustines view of 289, 2923
Celsus view of 1715
Jesus relationship with, Chapters Three, Seven and Eight passim
Marcions gnostic view of 1345, 150
Origens view of 1912, 193
in paganism 130
Platonist (the Good) 171, 177
as Unmoved Mover 178 see also Judaism
Subordinationism
God-fearers 17, 117
Gospel of Truth 147
Gospels, in general 20, 223, 734, 87
as four (Irenaeus) 1601, 317
resurrection accounts in 379
synoptic gospels 23, 86, 244 See also under individual authors
Goths 248, 254, 273, 293, 307, 308
conversion to subordinationism 240
Vandals 297, 3078
Gratian, Roman emperor 248, 254
Greek
culture 1245
as language of early Christianity 212, 38, 117, 217, 220, 292 see also Philosophy
Gregory the Great, pope 31618
Gregory of Nazianzus 245, 247, 2489, 24950, 2612, 264, 266, 276
Theological Orations 245, 247
Gregory of Nyssa 245, 246, 275, 280
Gregory the Wonderworker 12930, 188

Hadrian, Roman emperor 123, 127

Hanson, Richard on Nicene creed 234
Harnack, Adolf von 124, 152
Hasmonaean kingdom (of the Maccabees) 4, 12
Heaven 14
Hebrews, Letter to, Chapter Six passim, 282
Helena, mother of Constantine 230, 235, 258
Hell 193, 198, 289, 314
Helvidius 278, 279
Heresy 146, 156, 161, 181, 198, 283, 298, 300, 325, 320
Arian 243, 249
Hermas
Shepherd of 1634, 165, 170
Similitudes 165
Herod Antipas, king of Galilee 6, 19
Herod the Great 445
High priest
 Christ as (Hebrews) 70
role and powers of 5, 11
Hilary of Arles 261, 315
Hilary of Poitiers 243, 292
Hippolytus 166
Apostolic Tradition 165, 166
History, Christian approaches to 31718
Holy Land 2356, 2801
Holy Spirit 79, 84, 93, 96, 155, 159, 183, 184, 203
as inspiration for scripture 18990
within Trinity 2423, 246, 249, 2501, 292
Homoios, like, Homoians 241, 2467, 249, 250, 253, 255
Homoiousios, like in substance 241
Homoousios, of the same substance 232, 233, 2389, 240, 242
of Holy Spirit 250, 251
Honorius, son of Theodosius I 254, 256, 258, 295, 314
Hosea 34
Humankind
as privileged in creation 150 (Genesis), 173
as sinful 61, 112, 173, 2889
Hypatia, pagan philosopher 267
Hypostasis, personality within Trinity 246

Ignatius, bishop of Antioch 114, 116, 206, 207

Irenaeus 74, 1478, Chapter Fourteen passim, 182, 183
Adversus haereses 1445, 148, 15662, 218
and gnosticism 1445
Proof of the Apostolic Preaching 159
Isaiah, Book of 26, 7980, 184, 275, 2823, 290
Isauria, Christianity in 218
Isocrates 176
Israel, history of 9, 79
Jesus Christ as saviour of 28, 41
twelve tribes of 9, 28
James, brother of Jesus 45, 72
James, First Apocalypse of 149
James, letter of 104
as response to Paul 106
Jefferson, Thomas 106
Jerome, scholar 257, Chapter Twenty-seven passim
letter to Eustochium 2778, 284
translator 277, 2823
Jerusalem 9, 62
Church of the Holy Sepulchre 236
Greek culture in 17
Paul in 49, 50, 51, 62
Temple 4
Temple worship 5, 9, 10
destruction of (AD 70) 72, 133, 318
Jesus Christ
as apocalyptic prophet 15, 2630
baptism 24, 27
burial/empty tomb 324
Celsus view of 1725
Christos, Christ xv, 42
crucifixion 31
disciples, relationship with 77 (Mark), 79 (Matthew), 83, 84 (Luke), 904 (John) see also
Beloved Disciple
in gnosticism 145, 147
as Good Shepherd 92, 170
in gospel of Thomas 1512
Hebrew scriptures, attitude to 26
in Hebrews, Letter to, 6971
as high priest (Hebrews) 70
as historical figure Chapter Three passim
humanity/divinity relationship 412, 70, 85, 86, 92, 1012, 10910, 11213, 173, 192, 237, 292
human/divine natures of 3005, 306
in imperial iconography 253, 273
 as Jew 8
and Jews 81 (Matthew), 856 (Luke)
Law, attitude to 25, 80
as logos (the Word) 88, 113, 139, 180, 183, 306
as messiah 30, 42, 76 (Mark), 79 (Matthew), 84 (Luke), 112
Marcions conception of 1346
miracles of 76, 902
Origen on 192
as Passover lamb 140
pre-existence of 41, 88, 100, 158, 232, 2389 see also Arianism
relationship with God the Father (post AD 312 debates) 2304
resurrection of 39
physical (gospel accounts) 369
scriptural precedents 345
spiritual (Paul) 356
in Revelation (Book of) 109
and sacrifice on the cross 701, 207, 210, 240
as Son of God 76,
Chapter Eight passim, 241
as Son of Man 26, 28
as Sun 170, 184
as teacher (Matthew) 801
and Temple 289, 701 (Hebrews) trial 37
Johns account of 6
and the Twelve 28 see also Salvation
Trinity
Jesus Seminar 24, 256
Jews Chapter Two passim, 401, 489, 512, 55, 57, 58, 62, 81, 856, 912, Chapter Twelve
passim
in Alexandria 187
in Dura-Europus 132
in Galilee 19
in Sardis 140 See also Adversus Judaeos tradition
John, Acts of 128
John, Apocryphon of 1424
John, gospel of 27, 8794, 190, 292
John, letters of 946
John the Baptist 27, 275
John Chrysostom 141, 261, 2645, 269, 299, 323, 334 n.2
to Chapter Twenty-nine champion of Paul 64, 264
John Philoponus, philosopher 31011
John Zonarus 311
Jonah
as symbol of resurrection 345, 170, 190
Josephus, Jewish historian 10, 13, 20, 73
Jovian, Roman emperor 244
Jovinian 284
Judaea, province of 34
Roman province 12
Judaism Chapter Two passim diaspora 1617, 104, 140
ethics 1112 see also under Ethics
God, as understood within Judaism 10, 14, 91, 217
God-fearers 17, 117
messiah, Jewish conceptions of 6, 14, 16, 30
priesthood 1011 see also High priest
Sadducees
Passover 3, 10, 235
Pharisees 12
prophets 1213, 15 see under individual names
resurrection, Jewish views on idea of 11, 12, 34, 36
Sabbath 11
sacrifices in 10, 70
scribes 12
scriptures, Hebrew 11, 13, 26, 73, 134 see also Old Testament
Septuagint 17
synagogues 10, 132, 140, 141
Torah, see Law see also Christianity, relationship with Judaism
Judas 153
gospel of 1534
Jude, letter of 106
Julian, bishop of Eclanum 2956
Julian, Roman emperor 241, 244
Contra Galilaeos 244
Justin Martyr 35, 1369, 166, 180
Dialogue with Trypho the Jew 1369
First Apology 35, 137, 1678, 1812
Justina, widow of Valentinian I 254, 255
Justinian, Byzantine emperor 30710
conquests in west 3079, 31617
imposition of orthodoxy 3079, 309
law code 307

Kimbangu, Simon 129

Lactantius 214, 227, 323

On the Deaths of the Persecutors 210
Last Judgement 81, 89, 102, 104, 114, 159, 179, 203, 264, 295
Latin
Christian texts in 117, 282, 292, 315
in Marks gospel 75
Tertullian and 197
Vulgate 2823
Latin Christianity 196, 219, 317, 318
Law (Torah) 11, 12, 158, 183 see also under Jesus, Paul
Lawrence, martyr 207
Leo I, bishop of Rome 302, 31516
and contribution to Chalcedonian formula (Tome) 3023, 304
Libanius, orator 255
Licinius, Roman emperor 226, 229
Liturgy 1978, 217
Logos 68, 88, 139, 180, 183
in Stoicism 1789 See also under Jesus
Lombards 309, 31617
Lucian 129
Luke, gospel of 826
problems with birth narrative 328, n.10
Luther, Martin 612, 106
Lyons 209

Maccabees 910, 29
martyrs 206
Macedonius, Macedonians 249, 250, 252
Macrina, ascetic 274, 280
Magnus Maximus, usurper 254, 255
Maiuma, Gaza 217
Mani, Manicheism 216, 221, 281, 2867
Marcian, Byzantine emperor 3035, 306
Marcion 101, 1346, 181
Marcionites 136, 216
Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor 179
Meditations 124, 206, 332 Chapter Sixteen n.2
Mark 74, 221
Mark, gospel of 22, 748
Martin of Tours 255, 313, 317
Martyrs, martyrdom 116, 154, 157, 185, 187, 199,
Chapter Twenty passim, 313
cult of 216, 221, 255
literary presentation of 208, 21314
spiritual/healing power of martyrs body 214 See also Persecution
Mary, mother of Jesus/God cult of 236
gospel references 798, 84
in Protoevangelium of James 2789
as Theotokos 279, 301, 304, 310, 324
as virgin 80, 278, 279, 2823, 324
Mary Magdalene 37, 38, 147
Maternus Cynergius, Christian fanatic 255
Matthew, apostle 78
Matthew, gospel of 7881, 314
Maxentius 2267
Melchizedek 15, 70
Melania the Elder 269, 280
Melania the Younger 280
Meletius, bishop of Antioch 249, 250
Melitius of Alexandria 230
Melito, bishop of Sardis 8, 1401
Messiah 126, 138
Jewish conceptions of 6, 16, 30, 112
Shimon bar Kosiba as 126, 133 see also under Jesus
Middle Platonism 144, 177
Milan 254 See also Ambrose
Milvian Bridge, battle of 2267
Miracles 52, 118, 130, 172, 255, 31920 see also under Jesus
Mitchell, Stephen, study of Anatolia 130, 218
Mithras, Mithraism 117, 257
Monasteries, monasticism 274, 280, 2812, 31819
abbot, role of 282, 319
Monks 299, 305, 319
as shock troops 2556, 257, 281
Monophysitism 306, 309, 310
Monotheism 130, 226, 228
Montanists 155, 200
Moses 9, 14, 190, 275
Muratorian canon 66, 97

Nag Hammadi cache 142, 1467

Nazareth 19
Nectarius, bishop of Constantinople 250, 252, 299
Neocaesaraea 130
Nero, Roman emperor 72
Nestorianism 306, 309
Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople 301, 302, 304
New Testament 112, 133, 227
creation of 979, 103, 105, 1356
theology of 10910, 2389
Novatian, Novatianist controversy 2034
Numenius of Apamea 193

Old Testament 158, 265, 282, 317

as backing for Christian imperialism 226, 227, 259, 260, 265, 268, 272
as prophecy of Christ 7980, 138, 141, 159, 173, 190, 194, 244, 283, 318
Olympias 279
Olympic Games, end of 2578
Origen 90, 978, 18695, 262, 275
Contra Celsum 194
De principiis 189, 191, 283
as exegesist 18991
as heretic 283, 299, 310
Hexapla 189
and Jerome 276
as Platonist 189,190
Original sin 185, 2889, 290, 294, 296
Orthodox church 312
Orthodoxy 146, 156, 298, 322
imposition of Nicene Trinity as orthodoxy, Chapter Twenty-four passim, 307
Council of Constantinople (553) 310
Ossius 231
Oxyrhynchus 218

Pachomius 281
Pagans, paganism 201, 244, 256, 298, 307 see also Persecution, Christianity and paganism
Paideia 125, 179
Palladius, bishop of Ratiaria 254
Papias 21
on gospel by Mark 74
on gospel by Matthew 78
Parrhesia 266, 307
Passover see Judaism
Paul 44, 456,
Chapter Five passim, 101
on circumcision 50, 53, 54, 55, 63
conversion 4950, 130
Corinthians, relationship with 567, 589
and imperial church theology 226, 264 see also Augustine
Judaism, the Law, relationship with 50, 52, 54, 61
justification through faith 61
letters (attributed to Paul in New Testament) 47, 989, 136
authenticity of 98103
Colossians 99100, 207
1 Corinthians 35, 43, 5960
2 Corinthians 601
Ephesians 99
Galatians 534, 136
Hebrews Chapter Six passim
Pastoral letters (to Timothy and Titus) 1013, 118
to Philemon 58
Philippians 412, 63
Romans 612, 111, 160, 288, 289, 297
1 Thessalonians 57, 139
2 Thessalonians 1001
and Letter to James 106
Marcion as champion 136
righteousness 61
as Roman citizen 49
in Rome 63, 221
as Saul 44, 49
and slavery 49, 61
and spiritual resurrection of Jesus 356, 1923
and wisdom of the wise 56, 176, 323
 and women 60, 118 see also under Augustine
Paul of Samosata 2212, 232
Paul the Silentiary 309
Paula, companion of Jerome 277, 2801, 284
Paulinus of Nola 2623, 273
Pelagius, Pelagian debates 284, 2947, 315
Perpetua 205
Persecution
Arian of orthodox Christians 307
Christian of heretics 229, 249, 252
Christian of Jews/pagans 222, 25760, 265, 266, 286, 300, 307 see also under Augustine
pagan of Christians 163, 174, Chapter Twenty passim
debate over justification of 210
Decius 201, 21011
Diocletian/Galerius 21213, 216
Domitian 101, 113
in Lyons 157, 2089, 214
Maximin 213
Nero 109,113, 210
readmittance of lapsed 2012, 2034, 217, 229, 235
restraint of authorities 1267, 208, 209
Valerian 204, 211
pagan of Jews 206
Peter, Apocalypse of 149
Peter, apostle 40, 456, 74, 789, 88, 94, 104
martyrdom and commemoration in Rome 115, 221
Peter, gospel of 201, 334, 36
Peter, letters of 978, 1034, 105
Petrarch 291, 311
Pharisees, see Judaism
Philip, gospel of 147
Philippi 55
Philo 3, 17, 679, 89, 139, 150, 184
Philosophy, Greek Chapter Seventeen passim, 260, 276, 295, 332
in Byzantium 31012
and Christianity 152, 1712,
Chapter Seventeen passim, 188, 267
Gregory of Nazianzus and 245
schools/teachers of 170, 1767 see also Aristotle
Plato
Stoicism
Phrygia, Christianity in 155, 218, 220
Pionius, martyr 209, 213
Plato, Platonism 678, 135, 137, 150, 161, 164, 1712, 1778, 1813, 239, 272, 274, 287, 288
Academy, closing of 307
Phaedo 1823
The Republic 172, 184
Timaeus 135, 180, 1812, 319 see also Middle
Platonism Pliny the Younger 1256
Plotinus 124, 246, 287, 297
Plutarch 124
on Jewish Sabbath 11
Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, martyr 1567, 160, 208, 213
Pompey the Great 4
Pontius Pilate 37, 213
Poor, Christianity and 264, 2689, 299
Popes, see under Rome
Porphyry, bishop of Gaza 258, 266
Priesthood (Christian) 114, 11516
royal priesthood 104, 114 see also Bishops
Prisca, follower of Paul 568
Prophecy 112, 1556
Protoevangelium of James 2789
Pseudo-Clementine Homilies 139
Pseudo-Dionysius 272, 311, 321
Ptolemy, astronomer 124
Pulcheria, sister of Theodosius II 301, 303, 306
Pythagoras, Pythagoreans 179, 322

Q (source used in gospels) 23

Quirinius, governor of Syria 4
Qumran community 1314, 1516, 99

Ravenna 308
Arian baptistery 272
mausoleum of Gallia Placidia 273
Sant Apollinare Nuovo 273, 308, 309
San Vitale 272, 309
Reason 172, 176, 184, 274, 284, 290, 296, 322, 323, 324
Rebaptism, controversy over 2024, 314
Relics, cult of 214, 222, 255, 263, 2801, 284, 31920
True Cross 235, 2589
Renan, Life of Jesus 8
Resurrection 3240
in the flesh 155, 159, 166, 198
Augustine on 295
as spiritual event 356, 1923
Revelation 1556, 253
Revelation, Book of 15, 98, 1069, 118, 179, 227, 272, 282
authorship 1078
Rhetoric 176
Christian 264
Roman empire 123, 196
administration of 3, 4, 5, 75, 1257, 201, 208, 268, 328 n.10
breakdown of 3089, 316
citizenship 49
Diocletians reforms 212
division of (AD 395) 298
punishment as spectacle 208 see also Crucifixion
Roman law 5, 6, 57, 623, 1257, 133, 174, 197, 201, 208, 209
use of to impose religious uniformity 2489, 2513, 257, 322
 in bishops courts 2678
Rome
Altar of Victory 2545, 258
bishops of 160, 2034,
churches in
Santa Costanza 271, 273
St John Lateran 235, 269
Santa Maria Maggiore 271, 279
St Peters 79, 236
San Pudenziana 253, 273
Santa Sabina 271, 273, 315
early church in 115, 134, 137, 148, 160, 21617, 219
martyr shrines 221, 271
primacy of bishop of Rome, papacy 204, 217, 261, 31516, 320
sack of (410) 293, 315
visit of Theodosius I (390) 256
Rufinus 280, 283

Sabellus, Sabellianism 230, 233

Sacrifices, pagan 167, 201, 202, 211
ban on 228, 257 see also under Jesus
Judaism Sadducees 10, 11
Salvation 89, 192, 198, 221, 240, 323
San Antonio, monastery of 153
Sanders, E.P., and the historical Jesus 245
Sanhedrin 5, 44, 62, 92
Sardis 140
Satan 14, 58, 74, 156, 158, 174, 193
in Book of Revelation 1089
Scripture 134
authority of 103, 1378
interpretation of (exegesis) 138, 150 (Genesis), 15960
allegorical approach (Origen) 18991
Vulgate (Latin translation of) 2823 see also New Testament
 Old Testament
Second Coming 50, 57, 64, 114, 191
Secular learning, rejection of 307, 31012, 31718, 319
Augustine 287, 290
Jerome 284
Segal, Alan xvi
Seneca 179, 206
Sepphoris 19, 22
Septuagint 17, 48, 138
versus Hebrew original 138, 189, 2823
Serapeion (Alexandria) 186
Sergius Paullus, governor of Cyprus 523
Seth, Sethianism, in gnosticism 1489
Severus, bishop of Minorca 265
Shepherd of Hermas 1634, 165, 170
Shimon bar Kosiba (or Kokhba) 126, 133
Sidonius Apollinaris, bishop 319
Silas, companion of Paul 53, 54, 57
Simon Magus 146
Simplicius, philosopher 310
Sinfulness (as condition of human race) 61, 112 see also Original sin
Slavery, Christian attitudes to 99 see also Paul
Socrates, historian (fifth century AD) 230, 238, 239, 267
Socrates, philosopher (d. 399 BC) 180, 182, 206
Sol Invictus, cult of 226
Song of Songs 190, 272, 278
Soul 182, 191, 274, 323
Sozomen, historian 252
Stephen, bishop of Rome 2034
Stephen, martyr 44, 206
Stoicism 171, 1789
and Christianity 179, 197
Subordinationism 89, 139, 183, 2304, 239, 260, 292
 in Arius 230
in Eunomius 2456
in Origen 1934
Superstitio 127
Symmachus, pagan senator 255, 286
Synagogue 10, 17, 115, 140, 141
at Callinicum 255
at Dura-Europus 132
Syria, province of 34
Syriac 98, 161, 216, 276, 306

Tacitus, Roman historian 113, 127

Tatian 161, 17980
Address to the Greeks 17980
Diatessaron 161
Tatianus, praetorian prefect 257
Temple, see Jerusalem
Tertullian 1289, 163, 1645, 1801, 196200, 207, 284
Against Marcion 198
An Antidote to the Scorpions Sting 199
Apology 163, 165, 199
De carne Christi 180
De corona 197, 210
On the Adornment of Women 197
On the Veiling of Virgins 199
Praescriptio haereticorum 181, 197, 198, 200
Testimony of Truth 150
Thecla, Acts of 1289
Themistius, orator 244, 326
Theodora, empress 309
Theodoret, Christian historian 258
Theodoric, Ostrogoth leader 308, 316
Theodosian Law Code (438) 303
Theodosius I, Roman emperor 238, 247, 248
 and Ambrose, bishop of Milan 2546
assault on paganism 257260
death and funeral of 2589
imposition of Trinity 247, 2489, 2512
visit to Rome 256
Theodosius II, Roman emperor 266, 300, 3012, 303
Theodotus 2167
Theology xvi
conceptual problems of 161, 297, 298, 303, 310, 321, 325
and New Testament 86
and Nicene creed 239, 253, 259
in Latin west 243, 2967
Theophilus, bishop of Antioch 134, 182, 258, 265, 299300
Theos hypsistos 130
Theotokos, see Mary, mother of Jesus/God
Thessalonika 55, 248
riots in 256
Thomas, Acts of 128, 164
Thomas Aquinas 259, 296, 320
Thomas, gospel of 21, 1512, 278
Tiberius, Roman emperor 3, 5
Timaeus, see under Plato
Timothy, companion of Paul 54, 57
Titus, Roman emperor, and sack of Jerusalem 72
Toleration, religious 227, 244 Chapter Twenty-five passim
Trajan, Roman emperor 1256
Transfiguration 15, 35, 193
Trinity, trinitas 81, 197, 1934, 2334, 243, 247, 311
Cappadocian formula 246, 310
depicted at Nola 263
imposed by Theodosius I, 247, 2489, 2512
political implications of 2523
procession 2923
 in western Christianity 241, 243, 252 see also Augustine
Tyrrell, George 21

Ulfilas, missionary 240

Valens, Roman emperor, 244, 248, 270

Valentinian I, Roman emperor 244, 248
Valentinian II, Roman emperor 254, 255, 258
Valentinus, theologian 148, 149, 181
Valerian, Roman emperor 211
Vermes, Geza 26
Vespasian, Roman general and emperor 72
Vigilantius 284
Vigilius, bishop of Rome 309
Virginity 168, 199, 277

Wisdom (from the Book of Proverbs) 14, 69, 88, 158

Wright, Tom 389
 Photo Credits

The early texts of Christianity

1, 2 and 3 Fragments of Matthews gospel (above left) have been found in the rubbish dumps of the
Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus. There is a more complete early third century text of Luke, part of the
Bodmer papyri found on an early monastic site in Egypt (above right). Near by were found the
famous late fourth century Nag Hammadi texts (below). Note the transition to the codex, or bound
book, from the papyrus roll.
 From pagan to Christian

4 This late third century Christian epitaph from the Vatican Hill mixes traditional pagan and Christian
symbols. The Greek word ichthys, fish and the fish images signify Jesus as saviour, but otherwise
the shape and Latin wording are traditionally Roman.

5 An early (late second-century) banquet scene from the catacomb of Saint Callistus in Rome which
draws on Roman precedents. The loaves and fishes, and the catacomb setting, confirm it as a
Christian liturgical or Eucharistic meal.
6 Christ appropriates the iconography of the sun-god Helios in his chariot, perhaps to show that
Christianity has replaced this popular cult. Mosaic from the third-century Vatican cemetery in Rome.

Christ as Good Shepherd

7, 8 and 9 The Good Shepherd was a traditional figure in Greco-Roman art which appears to have
been adopted by Christians in the second century (perhaps following John 10:11). This late third
century figure (opposite above) was made in Asia Minor, possibly Phrygia, while the mosaic panel
(opposite below) comes from the magnificent early fourth century floor of the basilica of Aquileia in
north-eastern Italy. By the fifth century, Jesus is shown divested of his burden and, in the Mausoleum
of Galla Placidia in Ravenna, he is transformed into a costume of gold and purple as his sheep graze
around him (above).

The reconciliation of Peter and Paul

10 In their lifetimes, Peter and Paul represented different strands of Christianity and are shown in
conflict. By the fourth century, traditions of a common martyrdom in Rome lead to their appearance
together, here, on a belt buckle found near Naples, in a gesture of loving friendship.

11 Paul also stands by as Peter receives a scroll of the Law from a heavenly Christ. The iconography
is that of an official approaching an emperor, typical of this period of Christian art. From the
Mausoleum of Santa Costanza, Rome c. 350.

The Story of Jonah

12 and 13 The story of Jonah is one of the most commonly represented in early Christian art. He not
only reappears alive after three days (compare the resurrection accounts) but his intact flesh after the
regurgitation suggests myths of the unblemished bodies of martyrs. His nudity within water may also
reflect the practice of baptism by total immersion. Here, in a mosaic from Aquileia (left), the whale
sucks him in, while, in a roughly contemporary statuette from Asia Minor (below), he is shown being
cast out.
 Images of christ

14 This wooden image, from the door of the church of Santa Sabina in Rome, dated to c. 430, shows
a Christ who appears crucified but without a cross. Christian art seldom shows Christ suffering on the
cross before the tenth century, perhaps because of the shame involved or because of the theological
difficulty in showing a suffering deity. A cross without Christ was, however, acceptable and so was
written or spoken reference to the crucifixion.

15 In this exquisite pyxis, carved from an elephants tusk, Christ is shown in the dual role as authority
figure and teacher: he is seated on a throne and the raised right hand is a traditional teaching gesture.
Peter and Paul flank him with the other disciples. Early fifth century, provenance unknown.
16 In this mosaic from San Pudenziana in Rome (c. 390 but possibly later), Christ dressed in gold and
purple and enthroned in a jewelled chair representing the traditional authority of the magistrate. The
earliest known Christ in Majesty, it echoes the dominating fully frontal images of the emperors of
the period.
17 The transformation of Christ into a warrior (see the words of Ambrose on page 253) is shown in
this late fifth-century mosaic from Ravenna. Without any New Testament texts to support the theme,
the allusion is to the Old Testament Psalm 91 in which God will protect by treading on a lion and an
adder.

18 Sarcophagi were expensive to produce and so represent the beliefs of wealthier Christians. This
late third-century example from Rome shows Jonah, nude as usual, on the shore, the deceased as a
philosopher, his widow in the traditional pose of pietas, and Christ both as the Good Shepherd and at
his baptism, though here as a child. The nude Jonah may refer across to the baptism scene.
19 Here the Passion of Jesus is integrated into traditional Roman iconography. On the right side Jesus
is taken before Pontius Pilate who is shown as a traditional Roman authority figure. On the left of the
central panel, Jesus is crowned with a wreath of victory. He is not shown suffering on the cross but
his triumph over death is shown, symbolically, by the chi-rho monogram. From Rome, c. 350.
20 and 21 Traditional Roman iconography showed a deified emperor ascending into heaven, his right
hand grasped by a right hand from above. This is echoed in this early fifth-century ivory where three
women approach the tomb to be told by a stranger that Jesus has risen (above left). The illustration
matches the narrative of the Nicene creed where Jesus rose again on the third day in accordance with
the scriptures and ascended [apparently directly] into the heavens. As noted in the text (p. 39), the
physical appearances of Jesus on earth before the ascension might not have had the prominence in
early Christianity that is given to them today. The importance of the ascension of Elijah as a model is
suggested by this early fifth century panel (above right) from the church of Santa Sabina in Rome (see
p. 34). Note too Elijahs raised right hand.
22 The basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome (c. 420) shows how well the traditional Roman audience
hall adapted to Christian purposes. Santa Sabina is symbolically important in the new Christian
empire because it reuses columns from pagan temples. It is a very early example of arches used
between columns, a standard feature of later church building.
23 The rise of the Virgin Mary as Theotokos, bearer of God, is well shown by this sixth-century
presentation of her with the baby Jesus from the basilica of Sant Apollinare in Ravenna. She is
dressed in imperial purple and is seated on a bejewelled throne. Note the right hands of both raised in
the traditional philosophers expression of his right to teach (compare the earlier images of Jesus).
24 These ivory gospel book covers were made in northern Italy in the late fifth century. They provide
a superb example of fifth-century iconography in which canonical and non-canonical images exist
side by side. Note the symbols of the four evangelists in the top corners: Matthew as a winged man,
Luke as an ox, Mark as a lion and John as an eagle. They derive from the Book of Revelation (4:6-8)
with the four animals there being allocated to evangelists in a commentary by Jerome of c. 398. The
front cover stresses Jesus humanity and shows scenes from his and his mother Marys life. The upper
frame of the left vertical panel shows the annunciation at a spring, from the Protoevangelium of
James (see p. 278). The lower horizontal panel shows the Massacre of the Holy Innocents with Herod
issuing the order. There had been much embarrassment over this incident but by the fifth century
sermons proclaimed that the babies had achieved baptism (in blood) and martyrdom simultaneously,
and had avoided the miseries of an extended life. The centre piece has the sacrificial lamb, framed
within a wreath of grapes, wheat and fruit: symbols of the Eucharist. The other cover emphasises
Christs divinity, shown through his miracles, teachings and his presence in heaven. Note the marriage
feast at Cana in the bottom panel and the raising of Lazarus from the dead in the lower left-hand panel
of the vertical frame. The right-hand frame shows two images of Christ sitting on a globe, as a symbol
of his universal authority, with an image of the institution of the Eucharist between them. In the centre
the Cross, standing on a hill representing paradise, proclaims Christs victory over death. The open
doorway on each central panel symbolises entry to the gospels within the covers.
25 This wonderful bishops throne with its richly decorated ivory covering was made for Archbishop
Maximinian of Ravenna, who completed the church of San Vitale in Ravenna, in the mid-sixth century.
On the faade, John the Baptist is shown flanked by the four evangelists while the other panels show
scenes from the Old Testament and the life of Christ. The whole is enclosed within friezes of fertile
vines on which animals graze. Perhaps made in Constantinople (which had just regained Ravenna
from the Arian Ostrogoths).
26 This bejewelled cross was given by the Byzantine emperor Justin II to the city of Rome at the time
of Pope John III (56174). Similar crosses are shown in mosaics but this one had added significance
because it contained a relic of the True Cross behind the central medallion. The reliquary was to
become one of the most opulent forms of Christian art.
 Footnotes
This title for the Roman governor had replaced the earlier one of praefector.